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watevermelon · 5 years ago

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✧ MSBY Soulmate!Atsumu x Reader

➳ Summary: You knew all about his personality, whether through the rumor vine or the numerous warnings your friends gave you. But there was no avoiding it - he was your soulmate after all.

➳ fluff; mutual pining; small jealousy; slight angst with a happy ending ➳ Navigation

—-xXxXxXxXxXx—–

When he first met you, Atsumu hadn’t wanted to hear it.

This was in the prime of his life, being scouted for a Division 1 volleyball team was his life-goal and the only thing standing in his way was the upcoming Olympics. Which, of course, he was rumored to be included on as well.

Even back in high school, there were tons of fans and girls alike who would willingly fall to his feet. Regardless of his reputation, they were eager to share a single night despite knowing it would probably be their last. And Atsumu reveled in the excitement of the attention, feeding off the cheers and shallow admiration many threw at him both on the court and in the bedroom.

Atsumu didn’t want a soulmate, someone whom he was shackled to for the rest of his life.

No, initially he didn’t want you.

As for you, the feeling was mutual to a degree. Soulmates were a touchy topic for many, conversations about colors and contrast was something you could not personally relate to. The moment you met your soulmate, it was described to you as suddenly bathing your entire life in color.

A part of you was curious about your soulmate, where he was in the world, what was he doing and who he was with. But never had you centered your life around it, more like a passive curiosity that you hoped would one day be satiated.

You were a student of Inarizaki during its prime, the members of the volleyball team very popular among the student body. You had made acquaintances with Osamu and Suna through one or two classes, but never were you particularly close to them.

Your close friends often warned you about the leader of their trio anyway - Atsumu Miya and his drove of fuckboy energy.

There was no doubt that the twin had multiple fan-clubs and obsessive flings surrounding him. You remembered once feeling sympathetic for his soulmate - thinking about how hard it would be to get him to saddle down to a single person. Especially, with the way he lived his life, it seemed the setter could care less about the concept of soulmates to begin with.

No, Atsumu would be a terrible soulmate for whoever was unfortunately linked to him by the red string of fate.

And while he was admittedly very handsome, you did not particularly care about the setter to actively reach out to him.

Besides, it was not like he even knew who you were to begin with.

The years went by and any thoughts you had about the setter were filed away in the quiet recesses of your mind, only appearing once in a while when Miya Atsumu showed up on some article or newspaper cover for something regarding volleyball. You were silently proud of his accomplishments and representing your school and perfecture, achieving his dream and all, but hadn’t particularly cared about him in the first place.

That was all until one day, you walked into Onigiri Miya years later.

Even though Osamu was the quieter twin, he either had a good memory or was oddly sentimental, since he remembered your name immediately when you took a seat at the bar.

“I see the years have treated ya well.” Osamu started casually, almost making you blush at how the twin could say something like that as if totally normal between old friends. “How’ve ya been doin’?”

“I’ve been working in the city, just something temporary while I finish grad school.”

“Ah, you’ve always been smart.” He complimented.

“Nothing compared to you though.” You countered, “You look really happy doing this. And you have a few branches opening, I heard.”

“Keepin’ tabs on me?” He baited.

“Just like hearing about the success of our classmates.” You shrugged.

You were sure Osamu had something sassy to say back to you before he got called away by another customer. He motioned for you to stay as he walked to the other side.

Your eyes followed him for a few seconds, watching how despite working around food constantly, he still had an athletic build after all these years.

(Really, the dude was built like a dorito chip.)

And while you would have liked to stay and flirt with the pretty onigiri twin, a similar voice started from the door. A light chime signaling the front door opening, you heard a greeting toward Osamu, making you turn in your seat in interest.

Only to double-over in surprise as your world was suddenly too bright.

You had no time, not even seconds to get your bearings. Your life of white and black tones was suddenly full - the table covers were black and red, the plants at the windowsill were green with different arrangements of orange. You took in your surroundings quickly, soaking up colors for the first time in your life.

It seemed the other man was just as surprised, cursing as he went before you lifted your eyes simultaneously to look each other in the eyes once more.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Atsumu asked under his breath, but you heard it all the same.

What on earth could you possibly say to that?

Within seconds, the situation was whirling around in your brain that this was possibly the worst possible moment of your life.

You were soulmates that didn’t want each other - for opposite reasons, surely. You did not want to be with Atsumu since he was too much of a player to take the concept seriously and attempting anything with him would only result in heartache. And Atsumu didn’t want you because he surely had an endless amount of women he would rather be with.

“That’s what a girl wants to hear.” You countered as you crossed your arms.

You hadn't expected your first meeting with your soulmate to be met with expletives and it seemed Atsumu finally remembered a semblance of his manners.

“Sorry, ya caught me off-guard.” He started, “Now ain’t the greatest time for me.”

“Oh boy.” You murmured as you turned back in your seat at the bar, Atsumu taking the open one next to you.

“Wait, (L/N)? From Inarizaki?” Atsumu asked after he motioned toward Osamu in greeting.

“That’s me.” You formally introduced yourself, extending a hand out to him. He regarded you quietly before taking his phone out for you to take and put your number in.

“I knew it, I don’t forget a pretty face like yers after all.” Atsumu smoothly said. This was your soulmate and all you felt in response was resentment, thinking about all the women he probably used that line with. You handed him back his phone as he continued, “Wow, look at ya all grown up.”

“And look at you, a professional volleyball player.”

Atsumu looked at you with a critical eye, not one that you could really decipher, but it was clear he was looking at you very thoroughly. “Been to one’ve my games before?”

“Only a few times in high school.” You replied, facing his stare head-on as his smirk only widened. You weren’t sure what this was, but with a player like Atsumu, you were sure he was already sizing you up in a way you didn’t want.

Something told you that if you looked away, you would lose.

And so you held your ground, matching his intense stare as your onigiri meal waited for you at the bar-side.

Thankfully, his name was called out by his twin and Atsumu’s attention was grabbed away before you could break.

“I didn’t know ya knew each other?” Osamu started as he returned, a glass in hand as he wiped it dry with a towel.

“We don’t.” You said instead.

Atsumu’s smirk tightened as he answered, “Just found out we’re soulmates, actually.”

Osamu put the glass down and turned to you, “'Tsumu fucking with me?”

“Unfortunately, no.” You answered.

“Unfortunately?” Atsumu emphasized as he turned to you more fully, the infuriating smirk still on his face for some reason, “I’ll have ya know that Imma great catch.”

“Debatable.” Osamu countered.

You laughed at his quip before looking at Atsumu, “Yeah, but I’m sure you don’t even want to be ‘caught,’ right?” You shot-back at the setter, “Unless you’re going to try to convince me that you still don’t want to entertain the droves of women at your feet?”

“Think ya have me all figured out?” Atsumu asked as he leaned closer to you, a quirked brow on his face. You looked toward Osamu who looked strangely amused, eyes going between you and Atsumu.

“I think I know enough to know why ‘now ain’t the greatest time’ for you.” You replied sassily as you shot back his first words to you, pushing at his chest to give back your personal space.

Atsumu just took your hand and put it in his own, calling your bluff. “Oh? Like how my time and attention are on Olympics while I’d rather treat my baby properly?”

“Oh god.” You said as you laughed.

You laughed.

To his face?

All the setter could think about was how interesting you were.

He had expected his soulmate to ‘fall at his feet’ as many had in the past. To cling to him for attention and to demand an exclusive shackle to them. But here you were: beautiful and independent and even physically pushing him away.

You grabbed your hand out of his light embrace and turned back to your food, smiling at what you thought was just another line he would feed to his other one-night stands. Atsumu bit his lip in frustration and looked briefly at Osamu, who was watching the two of you like his own personal source of humor.

If you were any other girl, Atsumu would wave you off. Say that he didn’t have time for one girl who didn’t care, he had dozens who would willingly take the spot instead.

But you weren’t just any other girl, you were his soulmate.

And he could already feel the strange draw towards you.

Not even a few months ago he would scoff at the supposed soulmate bond. All the other members of the Black Jackals had found their other half and what they ranted on and on about made him sick. Bokuto somehow found a way to insert something about Akaashi at almost every conversation and Atsumu would constantly catch Hinata, even during midgame, staring at Kageyama.

They sickened him.

And yet somehow he now understood.

Seeing his soulmate before him, you were one of the first few people in a while that he felt like he had to prove himself to. There was probably an endless amount of expectation against him, he was sure. Being old classmates and seeing his name on a tabloid almost every other month would definitely do that.

And somehow only minutes into speaking to his soulmate, Atsumu wanted something different.

“I could always prove it to ya.” He shot toward you, making you laugh again.

Alright, this shit ain’t gonna cut it.

Atsumu licked at his bottom lip before pulling your bar stool closer to his, relishing in the way your eyes widened in surprise as he did so. “Come on, ya lookin’ at yer soulmate. Just say what we both want and we can leave here together right now.”

You shot him back an incredulous expression, a challenging look in your eye as he put the ball in your court. It was strange to feed off the provocation of someone else; a new type of adrenaline in him as he wanted to get to know you.

“Sorry, but I’d rather not leave with a man who has hickies down his neck from some other woman.”

Atsumu almost felt himself click his tongue in frustration, but you were not exactly wrong. Just a few hours ago he was inside someone he couldn’t even name with a gun to his head, but that was a world before you.

A world before color and the sassy soulmate who seemed to want nothing to do with him.

And while Atsumu wanted to prod a bit more, or at least get you to concede that he was the greatest option in the world, his phone rang out with Sakusa’s icon flashing on the screen.

Your eyes were drawn to the noise and you commented, “I’m sure you already have plans today anyway.”

Dashing that thought away, he lifted his phone to your eyes and showcased the proof to you. “Think again, my teammate is on the other line ready to chew my ass out.”

“Oh.” That shut you up, before shrugging and turning back to your food, “Well, I’ll see you around Atsumu.”

He leaned toward you, lips dropping beside your ear and lightly stating, “Keep ya schedule open this week.”

You hesitated for a second before saying, “Maybe.”

Atsumu answered the call and started gathering his things, his thoughts only half on Sakusa as the spiker complained about his cleaning habits in the locker room.

“We should probably exchange numbers again.” Osamu took out his phone, motioning it in your direction.

You took it with a smile, to which Atsumu scowled and made a point of reminding his twin. “Yer better know she’s my soulmate.”

Osamu sighed outwardly and you just laughed adding, “And he’s the better twin afterall.”

Atsumu’s eyes darkened, phone completely forgotten as he took a step toward you, “I’ll remind you later who really is the better twin.”

He made it so easy to tease him, to challenge the world Atsumu built-up around him. You wanted to break it for some reason, to knock him down a peg for being stuck with a player as a soulmate.

And so you shot back, “I’d like to see you try.”

Atsumu smirked as his hand casually grazed up your thigh and squeezed at the skin there. “That’s a promise.”

He shot both of you goodbye’s before returning to his phone call and walking out the door. Atsumu had the last word for now, but you weren’t going to fall to his feet so easily. Turning back to Osamu was no help either, his expression amused as he watched the entire moment play-out.

“An here I was wantin’ to ask ya out.” Osamu stated plainly before shrugging as you sat still in your chair at the irony.

You expected that to be the last you’d see of Atsumu for a while - weeks or months or maybe even years as he entertained the long list of women that would be much easier to maintain than a soulmate.

He called you the next day, inviting you over for dinner and a movie before the weekend started.

You steeled your spine, telling yourself that the gorgeous setter was not going to get to you in a single night. He lived on the better side of Tokyo, just his zip-code alone was a flex of his wallet. And so when you reached his penthouse floor, you took a deep breath in the elevator before you entered his domain.

Again, you expected him to make good on his promise before, to make a move and prove to you that he was a playboy, asshole that you knew from high-school, but instead you had a pleasant first night.

Atsumu Miya entertained you with a home-cooked meal of all things, the two of you sat across from each other at his mahogany dining table.

“Who would’ve thought you would know how to cook well?”

“Ya know who my brother is?” Atsumu joked, “As if 'Samu will me live if I was an ass in the kitchen.”

“Of course, you’re just an ass in other places then.” You shot back, receiving a playful look of offense from the setter, before continuing. “But this tasted amazing, so thank you.”

Atsumu had that smirking expression on his face, like he was carefully watching you, picking you apart in his mind as he thought about the next ten moves in this strange game.

The setter put a hand on your knee under the table and you expected that to be the move, for it to slide up the rest of the way. But instead he tapped the area twice before he stood, grabbing your empty plates and motioning for you to go to the living room.

“Why dont’cha get comfortable for the movie while I wash these?”

You weren’t disappointed, per se.

Just surprised, if anything.

And the night continued on just as tamely, playful and even flirty banter between the two of you over the action movie that played out. At one point he draped a casual arm across the back of the couch, resting his hand on your shoulder and pulling you to lean against him.

You had witty banter back and forth and when the movie finally ended, Atsumu commented how it was getting late. Surprised again, you took the out and allowed him to call a car for you. Atsumu walked you down to the street and only when he was opening the door for you, did he lightly pull you at the waist to chastely move your lips together.

Lasting only seconds, he pulled away just as quickly and ushered you into the car and whispered in your ear, “See you soon, (F/N).

Everything you had expected of the playboy you thought you knew was shattered, no sudden move to get you on your back on his bedsheets. Yes, he still said plenty of flirty things to you, but he had yet to actually act on it. Was that simply a bluff before? Or was he playing a longer game to get you off the defensive?

“Yer so cute, (F/N).” Atsumu complimented you once as you lounged on his couch another day, “There are days I can barely keep my hands off ya.”

And before you could recognize how quickly your life was changing, that first initial date snowballed into more dates and somehow you had gotten to the point where you would visit his place fairly often. Whether for dinner or a simple hangout, it seemed Atsumu was keen on inserting himself into your life little by little.

And somewhere along the way, you started to doubt your earlier musings of a fuck boy with no regard for a soulmate. Maybe he had changed from high school? Or maybe, he had changed when he met you?

Or at least, that’s what you wanted to believe.

He had convinced you one night, when you came over for dinner or whatever it must have been, when it started to absolutely downpour outside. He insisted that he did not feel safe sending you home in this weather, to which you countered that you had travelled in worse.

That did little to subdue his worries and instead you found yourself in an oversized jersey getting tucked into his bed that night.

“What’s that face about?” He asked as you laid there together, bed sheets up to your shoulders as he placed an arm beneath your head.

“Nothing, just thinking.”

You thought the first time you’d ever see his bedsheets would be when he was inside of you, not tamely laying beside you and kissing your forehead goodnight. And when he pulled you closer to him, cuddling you to sleep that night, that was one of the safest times you had ever felt.

If this was just a game, if you were just another one of his girls, he would have made a move that night, right?

And so you believed that Atsumu was honestly as earnest in his actions as he said, trying to get to know you for you. Not because you were just another woman to put as a notch on his bedpost, but because he was genuinely interested in you.

That was until you saw the first dating scandal since you had met the setter.

He had plenty of other scandals before this, many women had been attached to his name before, but never had you cared in the past because that was simply his reputation and you barely knew him. But now you had an active role in his life, how could you not know about some woman he was apparently also spending time with?

You did not want to believe some random tabloids over the trust of your soulmate. At least, that was until one day you overheard Atsumu on the phone with his twin.

“Listen, I took out (F/N) that first time cause ya told me to.”

That shit hurted.

The entire foundation of your relationship was based on the fact that his twin pressured him into getting to know you? Did Atsumu even want to get to know you in the first place? Was he really playing with your feelings this whole time?

You turned and went back to his living room, filing this away in your mind as you took a seat. If Atsumu didn’t actually want you in his life, then you would surely give him the space he wanted to begin with.

But you had missed the rest of that phone conversation.

“But I feel like I’ve already fallen for her. I don’t know, she’s different. Ya, ya. I know, I won’t fuck it up this time.”

And so you resolved to put between each other the space he wanted initially.

When you first met, he was pretty vocal about not wanting a soulmate at the time. But he had convinced you along the way, that maybe this was something the both of you wanted.

You were wrong.

Phone calls went ignored and you stopped replying to texts after a few curt replies. You needed distance if you were going to get over Miya Atsumu and his inevitable line of one-night stands.

Your soulmate was supposed to be the one person in the world who completed you, who understood you whole and made you feel loved. And while you were on the precipice of those feelings, it all quickly came crashing down with reality.

Atsumu Miya did not want you.

One night, as you were studying for grad-school, you were working on your part of the group project and were expecting a call any moment now from your other partners.

When the phone rang out, you picked it up without regard to the name on the screen until it was too late.

“Hey, (F/N)? Haven’t heard from you in a while.” Atsumu’s voice started immediately and it was not like you could hang-up on him now.

“Sorry, I’ve been busy trying to make rent, y’know. Not everyone can be a world-renowned professional athlete.”

There was a small pause on his end before, “... you could always stay with me if you have financial problems.”

What?

Why would he offer that? Just to make you suffer when he brought other women home?

“Don’t say things you’ll regret, haha.” You try to put back that earlier distance, “I’m sure you have a laundry list of girls who are eager to hear back from you after all.”

“What? (F/N), that’s not--”

You cut him off there, “Listen, I’m waiting on a couple people for a school thing. I’ll see you around, Miya-san.”

Miya-san.

Where had he fucked up?

In the weeks Atsumu had gotten to know you, it was a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach that he hadn’t felt for anyone. It was like the unspoken bond crap that Kita had explained to him in high school or that Suna, who recently found his own soulmate, raved about was actually real.

For the first time in his life he wanted to spend time with a woman for longer than a single night. He wanted to bring you home, kiss you good morning, and possibly have a home with both your names on the mailbox.

And while not even a few months ago he would have scoffed at shit like that, Atsumu wanted it and felt that for the first time it was in his grasp.

So where did he go wrong?

The last thing he ever wanted to do was actually make you feel unwanted and he feared that his initial words might have sparked something within you.

It was no surprise when Atsumu showed up at your apartment unannounced the next day.

Not expecting any company, you waltzed over to the door, thinking it might be a package delivery, and opened it in your pajamas.

Atsumu walked right past you and into the living room, words striking with the specificity of a cobra. “Are you just fucking with me?”

You sputtered before closing the door, “What?

He ran a stressed hand through his hair, but maintained eye-contact with you. “Yer my soulmate and I wanna get to know you. Am I alone in wantin’ this?”

“Shouldn’t I ask that of you?” You shot back, “You made it clear as day that you didn't want me as your soulmate to begin with!”

Atsumu sighed and took a step closer to you, closing the distance to lightly grab at your elbows. “For fucks sake, that was months ago. Don’t tell me that all that time together meant nothin’ to you?”

“Of course it meant something to me!” You exclaimed back, before pushing at his chest while he did not budge a single inch away. “Don’t act like I’m the one half-assed in this.”

He scowled back, “What is that suppos��ed to mean?”

You did not hesitate, "I know you only spent time with me because Osamu told you to.”

Atsumu recoiled in surprise and you took that as your escape, pushing his lingering hands away as you made for the kitchen. But the setter was out of his stupor quickly, trailing behind you.

“Fuck, what did ‘Samu tell you?”

“He didn’t have to tell me anything, I found out the truth myself.”

You could tell Atsumu’s stress level was skyrocketing, from the way his hair was mused without care and angled strangely in certain ways.

“Ya got it all wrong, it was just that first time!” Atsumu replied right behind you.

“What do you mean?”

“‘Samu was the one who told me to call ya the next day, but I was going to eventually ‘cause I wanted to get to know ya myself.”

You slowly took in his words, but it was hard to make any sort of decision with the setter right in front of you. A part of you, one that attributed it to the soulmate bond, was basically begging you to forgive him and wrap yourself in his embrace. That part wanted to feel those muscular arms around you once again, to feel safe in the arms of the one person in the universe meant for you.

But, afraid of getting hurt and without much argue left within you, you tossed back. “Yeah, eventually.”

Atsumu put a strong grip on your waist, holding you there in place before you could run away again.“‘Samu told me to, but I could’ave easily not done nothin’ that first night or any time after.”

You bit your lip at his words, Atsumu was laying all his cards on the table and he wanted a response from you.

And he wanted it now.

“Please, ya know me better by now.” Atsumu turned you in place to face him, leaning down to whisper his words against your forehead. “I know Imma bad deal - I can’t imagine what ya thought of me back in high school and even earlier this year. I have a bad history and an even worse reputation.”

“But after just a few weeks, I don’t want ya out of my life ever again. Just hearin’ ya call me by my last name yesterday nearly killed me.” Atsumu continued, trailing his lips further down until your foreheads were touching, “Lets give this a try - a real one. Give me the chance to make you happy for the rest of our lives.”

You closed your eyes, trying to ignore the insistent inner tug on your heart and how the setter was encompassing all your thoughts. “Atsumu… I--”

“Stop overthinkin’.” He interrupted, “I don’t want to bombard you. But I promise I won’t ever purposely hurt you.”

You took in a harsh breath, wondering how on earth this could be the same Miya Atsumu who plagued your high school. He had changed, not just from then but from the short amount of time you had already shared together. Opening your eyes slowly, Atsumu was still clutching you around the waist, but his eyes were carefully scanning your expression.

“Okay.”

You replied, leaning into his touch more as the smile on the setter’s face widened.

He did not waste a single moment, leaning down to capture your lips with his. You stood surprised for a second, before pushing up to meet his gentle touches. There was no sudden epiphany, no instant speech of undying love after. But there was no denying the harsh flutter intensifying after every inflamed touch.

Your heart pounded hard in your chest as you leaned more into the setter, knees going weak as his tongue roamed your open mouth. Your only focus was on how soft he felt against your mouth, how addictive it was to have Atsumu invaded all your senses. From the intense smell of his cologne to the light tickle of his blond hair against your head, Atsumu was dominating your every feeling.

And so it was quite a surprise when Atsumu gave you one final peck, before moving to your forehead and placing a light butterfly kiss there and backing off entirely.

“Fuck, just look at you.” He commented as he leaned back, looking at you up and down. There was no doubt the sight that greeted him, you messy with drool, tousled hair, and rumpled clothing. “Even in your sheep pajamas, it’s hard for me to keep my hands off ya.”

Your blush intensified at his words, putting a playful hand on his chest and muttering a small, “Shut up.”

“Never.” He quipped back, putting another kiss on your forehead before pulling away, only your hands still joined. “Now let’s get your apartment packed.”

“What?” You asked, confused. Your mind was still nothing more than a cup of spilled milk after Atsumu had all but ravaged your senses.

He smiled before pulling you back to your living room. You followed wordlessly, his previous statements slowly pouring into your brain after the intense liplock. It was hard to focus on anything when the attractive setter was making a point to kiss you at an open chance.

“As in packed to move in with me.”

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gh0st-patr0l · 4 years ago

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ADHD in DSMP

So about a week back, I made a post about Karl Jacobs (a bit of a passive aggressive one, I’ll admit, but I think it was justified), complaining that a lot of the ‘criticism’ I see about Karl is actually rather insensitive towards his ADHD. I got a lot of responses to that post, and the most common sources of confusion I saw were:

People not understanding what I was saying they should avoid being judgmental of, or-

People who didn’t know that Karl had ADHD or didn’t understand which behaviors were caused by it.

First of all, Karl has confirmed that he has ADHD.

(NOTE: Yes, I know he said ADD. ADD and ADHD used to be categorized as separate disorders, but in the most recent edition of the DSM, it was decided that they are both simply subtypes of the same disorder- ADHD is the correct technical term. ADD is still sometimes used as shorthand by some practitioners to diagnose primarily-inattentive ADHD, but it's a bit outdated.)

Secondly, that original post made me realize that a lot of people who may be well-meaning may genuinely not fully understand ADHD and its symptoms as well as they want to or think they might. If you aren’t aware, Karl isn’t the only one in the DSMP with ADHD- to my understanding, both Technoblade and Dream have confirmed that they have it as well. So, I thought it would be helpful to put together a comprehensive crash-course on ADHD symptoms and how they effect people’s behavior!

Now, before we go further, I want to address something- as I said earlier, I saw some people unsure of whether certain behaviors are ADHD or “just his personality”. I feel the need to point this out above the read more so people will see it. To answer this question, as someone with ADHD;

A lot of times, it’s both. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, meaning that it’s caused by the way your brain developed from birth. A lot of the symptoms and effects of ADHD are extremely influential towards the way we think, act, and behave, to the point where “symptoms” and “normal behavior” really don’t have a clean differentiation. This is why it’s technically classified as a ‘disorder’, instead of an illness. While certain aspects of it can require treatment, the condition itself as a whole is not something to be mitigated or eliminated- it’s a part of who we are as a person. This is also why sometimes, even if you don’t have ADHD, you’ll look at certain specific behaviors or experiences and go “Oh, but I do that too!”. A lot of ADHD ‘symptoms’ are just a bunch of normal traits or behaviors, but in combination with each other and some actually problematic aspects, form the appearance of the disorder.

So, what are you allowed to nitpick about it? Well, there’s no real ‘authority’ on this, and even if there was it certainly wouldn’t be me. But if you want my opinion? Nothing.

See, here’s the thing- what I was trying to say when I made that post was not that you can’t be critical of Karl. If you want to say something about his Actions, his Ideals, or the content he creates- sure, go for it, that’s fair. I will agree that there are some very valid and constructive points to be made. But when you post ‘criticism’ about the way he speaks, his interests or preoccupations, his personal behaviors? That’s not criticism. That’s just judging someone.

And you’re allowed to think that stuff! Nobody can control what annoys or bothers them. It doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. But you don’t need to be vocal about it. You can keep your mean thoughts to yourself. And if you do make posts or communities or whatever about judging someone for things they can’t change about themselves, don’t call it “criticism” or try to morally justify it. It’s not productive or righteous, it’s just rude. Nothing else.

Anyway. Back to Education!

The following will be a descriptive list of visible ADHD behaviors, using Karl’s behavior as examples.

I feel the need to add a disclaimer here- I am not a mental health professional. However! I have ADHD myself, I have taken some psychology courses and done a Lot of research into this stuff, and I’m the daughter of a therapist with access to a DSM. While I’m not an expert, I’d like to think I’m fairly well versed and knowledgeable on at least ADHD. (That being said, if by chance anyone who Is a professional sees this post and notices mistakes, by all means let me know and I’ll fix it!!)

WHAT IS ADHD?

You’re here for the behaviors more than the science, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. ADHD is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Known in the past as Attention Deficit Disorder). Despite its name, the root problem of ADHD is not in the person’s ability to pay attention, but their brain’s capability to manage itself. In simple terms, people with ADHD have a lot less control over what their brain does and wants. This results in some behavioral differences along with some personal challenges, namely a difficulty with attentiveness and self-discipline.

Now, onto the symptoms!

ATTENTION

This is perhaps the most visible and pervasive of the ADHD symptoms, hence why it’s the namesake. Inattention is a lack of focus and an inability to stay present and occupied with certain tasks or thoughts.

Because ADHD impairs self-management of the brain, people with it have an extremely hard time directing themselves anywhere but where their brain instinctively wants to go. This results in inattentiveness and the easiness of distraction that is often mocked or stereotyped for people with ADHD.

Here are some examples of how Karl can sometimes display his inattentiveness;

When he has an idea that he seems passionate about, only to drop it or switch to something totally different without warning soon after (either forgetting or getting bored of his original idea).

When he sets out to do something like a build, works on it for a short amount of time, and then immediately gives up or gets someone else to do it.

When someone else is talking and he totally zones out. (NOTE: While I wont make a whole section for it because it’s not easily observable, maladaptive (constant and intrusive) daydreaming is a common ADHD symptom as well!)

It’s important to remember that the whole problem with ADHD is that we can’t control when or what we focus on. When someone with ADHD zones out during a conversation or activity, it doesn’t mean they’re doing it on purpose, and they likely don’t mean any offense! We often are trying our best to listen or participate, but our brain just wont cooperate.

However, inattention is not the only way ADHD effects our focus. There’s also what’s called hyperfocus or hyperfixation, which is when we are so absorbed into a single subject, task, or idea that it is extremely difficult to get us to think about or do anything else. This is usually because our brains have found something that is getting those satisfaction chemicals flowing, and it’s clinging to that with everything it’s got.

People with ADHD will often experience brief periods of hyperfocus. Think of how Karl talks about spending hours straight working on a build or project without eating or drinking, or how he’ll sit down to play a game with someone and end up going six hours without even noticing.

There are also hyperfixations, where someone with ADHD becomes extremely preoccupied with a certain subject, topic, etc. for a period of time. These can be short term- personally, my hyperfixation can sometimes change as quickly as a couple weeks at a time. However, it can also be long term. Karl has been obsessed with Survivor since the second grade- not to mention his memorabilia, rambling, and constant references to Kingdom Hearts.

HYPERACTIVITY/STIMMING

This is a BIG one for Karl. I should clarify; ‘stimming’ is not a technical term, and in professional situations these behaviors are just referred to as Hyperactivity. However, I personally like the term stimming much more and find it far more accurate to what the behaviors actually are, so I’ll be using that instead for this post.

If you’re not already familiar, ‘stimming’ (derived from ‘stimulation’) is an unofficial term used to describe consistent and abnormal patterns of physical and vocal behavior typically expressed by people with ADHD and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). This includes things that people usually call fidgets or tics.

(NOTE: There are differences in how people with those two disorders stim. This post will explain stimming specifically from an ADHD perspective! ASD stimming is caused by very different factors and presents itself in much different ways. Do your own research if you’re curious!)

There are two major observable forms of stimming- physical and vocal. Karl expresses both VERY often! I’ll use examples for each type;

Physical Stims: Flapping his hands/arms, jumping up and down when he’s excited, twisting around into odd positions in his chair, throwing, hitting, or tapping things, standing up and pacing around when he’s hyped up or laughing, twisting his rings, etc.

Vocal Stims: When he gets excited and repeats a certain phrase incessantly (Think any variation of “I’m popping off”), making certain repetitive noises while he’s focused on something or bored (”la la la”, the meow-noises, the weird heart-beat noise, etc.), singing or humming, tongue clicking.

It should be noted here that it’s pretty common for people with ADHD to get “stuck” on certain phrases or noises, and be unable to stop repeating them (reminiscent of echolalia, a symptom of ASD, but not the same thing). Think of how Karl might sometimes keep making a weird noise for an extended period of time even though it’s not that funny, or that one time he was physically struggling to keep himself from singing the Bakugan theme. These repetitions are completely impulsive and trust me, we usually know how annoying it is while we’re doing it, but we physically cannot stop.

ADHD stims are caused by the fact that the barrier between our brain and body is much weaker than a normal person’s. Because of this, most ADHD stims are actually very positive expressions of joy, excitement, or enthusiasm! Y’know how when you get excited, you feel like you wanna jump or dance? The ‘hyperactivity’ of ADHD is basically just that, but we don’t have the self-control to Not do it.

Stims can be caused by negative feelings like overstimulation, but in ADHD this is not nearly as common. Usually, the most negative reason we’ll stim is when we’re bored- in that case, our brain isn’t getting the Constant Stimulation that it naturally wants, so stimming is a way to make our own.

Whatever the cause, stimming is natural and impulsive. While different people experience it to varying degrees, those who regularly stim typically have little to no control over it. Suppressing stims is very hard and very frustrating to do.

Besides that, like I said- ADHD stims are often an expression of joy, excitement, or enthusiasm. They’re a beautiful thing that shouldn’t be seen as shameful or annoying!

BEHAVIORAL DIFFICULTIES

ADHD is a disorder which causes a lack of self-control. Naturally, this means that people with ADHD are inherently reckless, impulsive, and struggle with a lack of self-discipline that they cannot fix.

Of course, people with ADHD do still have some level of self-control, and they are still responsible for conscious, long-term behavioral patterns and decisions. However, in regards to most things, they are much, much less capable of controlling themselves than an average neurotypical person is.

These are some examples of how this will often present itself in Karl;

Excessive rambling, dragging on a joke or conversation when it could and should probably have been dropped, etc.

Speaking over or interrupting other people (NOTE: As someone with ADHD- THIS IS ALMOST ALWAYS UNINTENTIONAL. I know it can seem rude or annoying but I promise, 90% of the time if someone with ADHD talks over you, they either didn’t realize or physically couldn’t help it. Please try to be patient!)

Lack of awareness towards social cues (NOTE: Unlike ASD, in which the person is incapable of/has problems fully understanding social cues, ADHD results in a lack of awareness. For whatever reason, we’re often just not paying close enough attention to pick up on things like body language, tone of speech, and facial expression as well as we would normally.)

Indecisiveness and overthinking

Bluntness, lack of subtlety

Unintentional dismissiveness, accidentally ignoring things/people (NOTE: Again, this behavior is purely accidental. In this case, it’s usually just the person genuinely not hearing or processing things.)

Making noises, speaking, joking, etc. at inappropriate times

There’s probably more, but I think you get the idea by now. A lot of the time, behavior which results from ADHD can be seen as rude, lazy, dismissive, or otherwise intentionally harmful. In reality, we just aren’t wired to navigate common social interaction with grace.

In Karl’s case, he’s clearly an incredibly sweet, empathetic, and kind-hearted person, if the various close friends who have talked about him are to be believed. Just because he talks over people or makes a poorly timed joke, that doesn’t mean he meant any harm.

I think that’s about it for how much I wanted to point out! You can do more research if you’re curious, but I feel like this post should be enough to tell you what to keep in mind and be understanding about when talking about/making judgements on Karl, and other people with ADHD.

#sorry if this is longwinded but I had a lot to say so [shrug]#karl jacobs #dsmp #dream smp #dreamwastaken #ghost.txt

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electricbluebutterflies · 4 years ago

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Hi!! Saw that promp list you reblogged, so I'm shooting my shot for Nina + Matthias with this one: 'Learning what the other person likes sexually' thank you 😊

(Also...idk if you'd accept 1 or 2 more requests for this otp? Loved the prompts but I dont wanna spam your inbox. 😜)

I kinda love them... obvious smut ahead and also on ao3.

She’s broken him. He’s not sure how much he minds.

Look, objectively the fact that he is stuck in the frozen middle of nowhere and owes his continued survival to a witch who will not shut up and seduced him more out of boredom than anything that seems like actual desire on her part is… almost all of his worst nightmares come true. But all of that established and ignored, Nina is not the worst possible person to be stuck with. She’s beautiful, occasionally funny in a way that breaks the cultural barriers between them, knows what she wants…

They’ve stopped for the night, no closer to civilization than they were when they woke up but not going around in circles yet – and he’s left subtle markings at each fishing hut they’ve temporarily occupied, he would know – and he knows what happens next, and this time he wants to do better.

Nina is, he has learned over the past few days, a very particular combination of insatiable and bossy. When she decides she wants, and apparently physical activities are how she deals with her everything, she makes herself very clear and pins him to whatever passes for a bed wherever they are. (Or, very briefly yesterday, a wall.) And while Matthias is a willing enough participant in his own corruption, he can’t push away the feeling that the power dynamic is the truly wrong thing here. A man is not supposed to be passive, even when faced with… all of that. But as it is, he’s not sure he’ll get the chance to change it up.

And sure enough, after an improvised meal of probably-undercooked fish, she reaches out. Puts her mouth on his and starts taking kisses, and he’s so powerless and so into it and-

“Stop,” he breathes, unsure if the word even comes out.

To his great surprise, she freezes. She’s still clinging to him, but not actively doing anything more. “You okay? Did I do something-“

“You need to rest,” he murmurs, adding a little endearment in his native language. Yep, she’s definitely corrupted him. “If you want, let me give.”

Nina rolls her eyes. “Are you sure?!”

“I need to learn how to do this… properly.”

The look on her face is the most amused horror he’s ever seen and oh he almost loves her for it. “I am not passive. You do realize that, right?”

“You don’t have to be. I don’t know… tell me what to do.”

She takes a step back. “Alright. How detailed instructions do you want?”

“Tell me how to make you happy.”

Nina takes another step back and shifts her body into an open position. “Alright. Undress me. You’ve seen how all of this works…”

He has, and he steps forward and tries. The buttons of her vest are so tiny, and of course she’d done up all of them, and it takes a frighteningly long time for his fingers to get them all undone. Then her shirt, also made challenging with the laces done up too tight and oh the sight of her curves underneath it is distracting and unfair and-

Somehow, he figures out all the knots and gets it off her, gets rewarded with the sight of her soft skin and pointy breasts. Even this would be enough, and he-

“Put your mouth… somewhere.”

If nothing else, Matthias is good at following orders. Even if they are given by a… no, at this point he doesn’t think she’s a witch. Not like he was taught to believe. Definitely not normal, but far more human than he expected.

Not that it matters, he reminds himself as he leans down and tries to kiss her breasts. She’s even paler there than she is elsewhere, and her body is warm and unfair. She squirms a little, but the noises she makes are happy enough and she hasn’t yelled at him so he’s hopefully not screwing this up too badly and-

On instinct, he puts his mouth around one of her nipples and licks, and her noises turn closer to what she apparently sounds like in bliss. He’s still learning how that works, but if this helps get her there…

“Okay, I was just going to have you straight-up fuck me but nevermind you’re actually good with your mouth,” she says, yanking on his hair to pull him up and off. “This still…?”

“Yes. Keep showing me.”

“I’m not showing you, I’m trying to un-repress you,” she laughs. “Undo my skirt and get me on the bed.”

He does, and without being told he knows what she wants next. Well, this may be the strangest experience yet with her, but…

The space between her thighs is beautiful, swollen pink instead of ivory, already shiny with her warmth. He pokes around with his fingers – this, at least, she has let him do before – and makes a plan. If he’s wrong then he’s wrong and he still expects she’ll get mad at him at some point during this, but until then he-

“Head. Down. Now.” From this angle she looks magnificent, and he can see her desperation in a different way. “Keep going unless I grab your ear, no matter what else I do.”

In the recent past, in the time before she happened to him, all of this was foreign to him. It was, and remains, improper for a man of his status to know too much about the sacred beauty of women before marrying one. In that way he is ruined now, and he cannot imagine any of this being so good with some equally innocent creature. This one is so much better. This one is-

She kicks his shoulder, more out of annoyance than wanting to hurt. “I know I’m cute but get on with it.”

He complies, pressing his mouth to her outer petals. He is well aware he has too much scruff right now, and that might hurt where she’s sensitive… no, might hurt some lesser woman, won’t make this one bat an eyelash. Nina is different and Nina is herself. And she is perfect, he thinks as instinct takes over and he starts to lick. Beautiful wet nightmare.

This is a first attempt, not perfection. His desire to make her happy counts for something, he hopes as he tries different things, because that’s about the only part of this in his favor. This act she’s suggested is so new, something he’s surprised she even wants, and to have his world reduced to her womanly parts is… perfect for him, honestly. He is aware of his own body responding to it, but she hasn’t asked for that yet and maybe she won’t tonight and-

As he is learning is normal for her, Nina falls apart with a few breathless noises. Apparently this also includes clenching her thighs tight enough his head hurts and more of her sweet warmth dripping onto his tongue. For a moment he’s not sure he can breathe either, and-

The pressure lessens and instead of grabbing his ear like she said, she pulls him up to her level by the shoulders.

“Did I… please you?”

She rolls over to cover his face in wet kisses. “You need to have more faith in your abilities. That was nice.”

“What… what now?”

“Do you still want to have me?” she asks, putting her hand between his legs.

As if that’s a question. Matthias has been able to ignore his own body until now, but the slightest touch makes him squirm and he’s still fully dressed and she is unfair and-

“Always,” he breathes. Might as well admit it. “Is that alright? You already…”

“Great thing about having the parts I do is I can fall apart multiple times,” she shrugs like that should be too obvious. “I am perfectly fine with it if you are.”

“Please.”

“Good. Undress for me and… I wanna see what you do.”

It no longer feels awkward to feel her eyes on him as he sheds his layers. Her expression is appreciative, and he’s never thought too much about what his body might look like to other people but clearly the only person who matters right now is into it. Years after her, he thinks, if there is an after her, he will always remember this as he looks at his skin. Impossible perfect woman almost making him happy.

And sure enough, as he’d both hoped and feared, his prick is in full form. And to think he’d expected it would hurt her the first time she wanted him. There’s no fear of that now, but a near-inevitability he won’t last long enough to give her what she wants and-

He looks at her, spread out for him and waiting, and he knows whatever he does will be enough.

Soft beautiful his, he repeats as he maneuvers his body over her. Perfect woman, as he lines up his prick. More than he had ever dreamed of, as he covers her.

She feels perfect around him, and he rolls his hips against hers and tries to find a pattern the way she does when she covers him and he is so sure he’s doing it wrong but she keeps taking kisses anyways so maybe not. Perfect, and he feels himself tense up and no too soon he hasn’t given her everything he hasn’t-

He falls apart anyways, best intentions be damned, boneless on top of her even as their bodies separate.

“I didn’t mean to-“

“Do I look like I’m complaining?”

No, he thinks as he maneuvers his body so most of his weight is off of her, no she does not. If anything, Nina looks the happiest he’s seen her, pink and glowing and content. “You look beautiful,” he says before he talks himself out of it.

“Good.” She shakes her head, her hair flying everywhere. “Are you… was all of that okay?”

She gets under his skin like no one else ever has, and he almost loves her for it and he is undone. “I don’t know if I did it right.”

“There is no right. Not with this. There’s only… what I like may be different from what some other person likes, and each time you’re with someone new you get to figure it all out again.”

“That’s not what I-“

“You made me feel good. As long as you felt good too… that’s the important part.”

And he did, he lets himself feel as they maneuver themselves into a comfortable position for sleep. Dangerous woman. He is ruined for anyone else now, and… maybe that’s alright.

#ebf talks to anons #helnik #ebf writes fic

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shyrose57 · 4 years ago

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It works very much like illusions. Ranbob can see him but can't touch him. While Dream can touch him (though it feel like more of a faint touch). The entire time Ranbob feels like he's dreaming but due to physical evidence, like notes left by Dream, he knows it isn't a dream. He's just kinda existing. But in actuality he's not completely "there", sometimes he is aware of what's going on (though he never remembers more often than not) but that's when Dream allows it, other than that he's either floating aimlessly in the void or dreaming. Not aware of what's happening.

Definitely, Enderman tend to be 7 ft+. Infact when traveling and Enderman spot Ranbob, they always voice their worry about him being so short. They know he's a hybrid so he was always going to be shorter than them, but he shouldn't have been this short. His growth is permanently stunted. Its a miracle he even got those 2 inches to be honest. Ran was definitely caught off guard seeing Ranbob so short. But quickly dismissed it in favor of attacking him. But later on as time passes, he can't dismiss the unease and concern he gets when he thinks about the difference so easily as he did eailer. The Gladiators notice right away but don't comment on it, the Fishermen think Ranbobs height is normal so when they meet Ran and learn Enderman hybrids typically grow that big and bigger their caught off guard, Cletus and Charles attempt to question Ran what its like to be so tall but Benjamin stops them.

He did, the Dream Mask has a small bit of it broken off due to it being dropped (Ranbob didn't break it. He suspects maybe when it was being transferred it got dropped in its holding box and thats what broke it). Ranbob picked it up because he meant to throw it away, but he forgot too. Giving Dream more time to get a hold on him. They talked about whatever came to mind at first since Benjamin didn't want to start off with the rough questions. But eventually the two did start to talk about what happened to Ranbob and who/what Dream was.

Dream does not consider it important enough because he thinks he's never going back there. So it falls into disrepair and gets all dusty with some mold even growing in the room.

Dreams petty and likes being in control of everything. But Dream would just kinda wander, making sure no ones alive. Every now and again he'll get bored and just destroy something. The fishermen explored and read about the history of Mizu while they were there, then after Ranbob attacked them spent most of the time arguing about what to do with him.

It just leads to Cletus being mean/rude to Ranbob and taking much longer than the others to be comfortable around him. If that's what you mean.

-------------------

Yes! When it was down to just 4 people left alive in Mizu, Ran stumbled upon the 4th person dead, then it all kind of clicks in his head, as the only other person currently alive is a Council Member, that it has to be his brother. So he rushes off to find the Council Member so they can stop Ranbob, only to find Ranbob standing over his dead corpse. Thats when the chase around Mizu ticks off that ends with Ran fleeing Mizu.

Cause while spiders are passive in daytime, creepers aren't, and don't burn in the light. Plus they are loud with their explodes (yet oddly quiet) which can give his position away.

Eh I'll say. Their not really super common because mixing them can cause serious side effects during and after mixture. But the healing, sleep aids, and infection mixtures are common as they've been figured out and can safely be made. Fun fact: Subbin actually has an entire community and an official place in the government for figuring out potion mixtures, making new ones, and making the mixing process as safe as possible.

The group doesn't really use the mixtures much, expect for Rans sleep aid and a every now and again healing mixture when a Pit match goes wrong. Cause Grievous used to intern in a potion shop and learned all about them then.

He really did.

Your right! Not many people traverse it. Because he was a Technoblade follower, and they typically get taught the bare basics of surviving in environments like the Nether, deserts, snow, caves, etc in their teachings. He got da book from his Idol teachers, everyone in his Idol group got a book as well.

You can ask! I welcome any and all questions.

There's gold coins (I forget the actual in-game name oop) ore deposits in the Nether, so he mines that. Not any specific ones, cause there is still a language barrier and a mostly gesture barrier (expect for the universal ones like wait, ok/good, no harm, etc).

They made a group decision to try to check the Nether on a whim. Though mostly cause one guy just wouldn't shut up about it. They found a broken portal and managed to repair it enough to enter.

The Fishermen and Ranbob where kinda confused (cause Ran hadn't fully told them about his time on the run.) But expressed sympathy at his house being burned down. Jackie and Grievous wanted to search it for anything usable, Ran didn't let em cause he thinks there's nothing left. Watson shoots Ran a sympathetic look and declared that he wants to keep moving to find shelter. Benjamin quickly agreeing and the group moves on.

---------Tip of The Iceberg-----------

He does not expect in all of their times he's still the God of the world.

Honestly, most of them were fine. Bad was the only one who was mad and wasn't ok with it. The Masquerade, The Pit, Sam, Sapnap, Quackity, Foolish, Ranboo, Skeppy, Tubbo, Tommy, and Karl all say the Egg wrote it because they all have had experience with the Egg. The Haunted Mansion, The Wild West, George, Fundy, Eret, Jack, Niki, and Puffy all say XD because they've either had no experience with the Egg or believe in XD's existence. Philza and Technoblade actually go both ways. (If I forgot someone, oops).

Technoblade, Phil, Niki, The Pit, The Wild West, Puffy, Sapnap, and Sam are all on the Frontline. While the others are all split between research into the egg (The Masquerade is in this one of course), and running tests. Fundy is a runner, delivering orders, requests, or new information. Foolish is on both the researching, testing, and frontlines, he is on the frontlines when needed but otherwise is researching and testing. Karl is typically somewhere with one of the many Traveler groups. Quackity, Eret, and Sam (when not on frontlines) are on planning duties.

The Egg is strong enough to propose a real and constant threat to the groups. Everyone is typically on the move to avoid the reaching of the Egg and its Eggpire.

Bad hasn't gotten what he wants, which is Skeppy. And as he has "opened his eyes" a bit he sees the hypocrisy, manipulation, and lies that surround the Egg and wants out.

----------------------

Ye ye Brothers AU sorry.

The fishermen get to their home, wake up the next day, and Ranbob is already making a field for wheat and potatoes. Benjamin fucking squawks and races out to make Ranbob stop. And Isaac eventually has to come out and help cause Ranbob is refusing to leave. Cletus laughs at Ranbob and makes fun of him but stops when he sees Charles sadly staring at him. A silent ask to stop.

He does but Porkius is chill and let's the Gladiators do whatever they want as long as they are still in fighting condition for matches and gives them money every week. Plus he's chill and is kinda friends with them. But sometimes Porkius has them go to extravagant parties with him. They all hate going, not just Ran. Mostly cause the rich people are snobs and either 1. Constantly insult them in conversation than act surprised when they get mad at them and report it to Porkius. 2. Talk with them but talk exclusively about themselves and are insensitive to the Gladiators. But sometimes there's actually people at the parties who are genuinely curious and kind and want to get to know the Gladiators. Those conversations are pleasant and the Gladiators, no matter who it is, actively enjoy the conversation.

Ran has always been mischievous. Even witnessing murder, being traumatized, hunted constantly, and fighting non-stop hasn't changed that. If anything he got more mischievous over time.

Something extra I wanted to share:

-There is music in world and the player the Gladiators share get brought on the trip so they can play music the entire time.

-Ran and Grievous fight over who gets to pick music often.

-Fun fact about why I did this: Every single part of this story and all others has been either created by or inspired by music. For example the Tip of The Iceberg AU was solely inspired by the song True North (by Vocal Line), while Brothers AU was made from Ruler of Everything (by Tally Hall) and partly Mind Electric (by Miracle Musical). So I wanted to include music somehow. (I actually have a entire playlist with music that I've used for certain parts of the Brothers AU.)

Brothers AU:

Interesting, interesting. What triggers these 'dreams'? Can Dream do it, or is it like just something that happens?

I'm assuming only the brothers would know what the Endermen are saying, but there's also body language, so how does everyone react to that behavior? Do one of the brothers ever tell them what's being said, or? What's everyone's thoughts on Ranbob's height, seeing as the Fishermen were surprised, and the Gladiators immediately noticed?

How does Benjamin feel about what he hears? Is he a bit skeptical at first, or fully believing Ranbob's words?

So the room's in disrepair, interesting. At some point, it's mentioned that they go back there, I think, so does that strike anyone as odd?

He destroyed stuff? Like just general items or artifacts? How did Ranbob feel, if/when he was aware?

------------------

Why didn't he assume it was the Council Member? What clues led him to his brother instead?

Understandable.

Oh, that's really interesting!

World building galore, fantastic!

Who was the one guy?

He thinks? Was there something left then?

-----------------

Tip Of The Iceberg AU:

Still the god? He didn't expect that? Was someone else supposed to be? If so, who? What's his reaction to learning such?

Bad seems to be straying from the egg, does he intend to leave it? Or does it have a way to keep him?

Do we have any particular groups here? People who fight or work well together, and kind of drift to one another? What sort of dynamics do we get with all of this, especially since everyone's on the move constantly to avoid the Eggpire.

------------------

Brothers AU:

Benjamin: Whatcha got there?

Ranbob: Excessive labor when I should be resting.

Benjamin, gasping: NO!

What are the parties typically like? Do they behave or cause havoc? Switch it up? Anyone in particular they don't hate talking to there?

Always mischievous, just better at hiding it. Wait, that means Ranbob would have known he was like that, wouldn't he? He'd know exactly what to expect. Would anyone else? Either way, that should be amusing.

------

What kind of music do they have, and what does everyone prefer to listen to?

(Time to go on a song-spree!)

#dream smp #dream smp au #Brothers AU #Tip Of The Iceberg AU #tales from the smp

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speuradair · 5 years ago

Text

After School Lesson | M.N.

(Author’s Note- This is a reupload of a fic I posted a few months ago. I realized that it was deleted at some point? I’m not sure how or why, but here it is again lol)

Word Count: 3.1k

Contains: Death mention, swearing, angst, injury

Requested: by @technolilly

“Hi! How about a Makoto X Reader where Makoto, Kyoko, and the reader were the three most suspicious people in the Mukuro trial. During the trial, Reader takes the blame off Makoto but at the last second Kyoko throws the reader under the bus, meaning everyone voted for reader so she was executed? Alter ego saves her and then Makoto and Kyoko rescue her from the garbage? Basically just make the first half really angsty and then have a happy reunion? Feel free to change anything you want! Tysm! “

“Being optimistic is the only thing I’m good at.” - Makoto Naegi

Thousands of horrific incidents happened everyday. People got attacked, things got stolen, accidents happened. It was just a fact of life. Yet somehow, even after hearing news reports of heinous crimes everyday of your almost eighteen years of life, you’re still never prepared for anything horrific to happen to you.

Then again, this kind of thing was recognizably unprecedented. In all of those newscasts you’d heard, both actively and passively, you’d never heard about anything like this. How could you have possibly prepared to be thrown into the midst of a Killing Game?

Though it was hard to keep track of the days while being secluded away, you were certain you’d been trapped in Hope’s Peak Academy for at least a month. There had been over 730 hours to process this, but it still didn’t feel real. Maybe on some level you were subconsciously clinging onto a false shred of hope that this was just a night terror, or maybe your mind just wasn’t willing to admit that things really were this dire. Regardless of the reasoning, you’d spent your days here in an unlikely mix of dread and apathy. You were both hyper-aware and numb.

And somehow, even in moments of heightened tension like this one, you found yourself spacing out and losing small chunks of time. You hadn’t even noticed you’d zoned out at first, and you certainly hadn’t intended to, but you realized you’d missed the last minute or so of the Class Trial. In circumstances like this, not catching a minute’s worth of conversation could have been a deadly mistake.

“Without my room key, I couldn’t have possibly put the locker key in there myself.”

Kirigiri was still debating Byakuya’s claim that she must’ve killed Mukuro, as the key to the locker holding the believed murder weapon was found in her room. Thankfully, that meant you couldn’t have missed anything too revolutionary. You took this to be reassuring and allowed your gaze to deviate from the two arguing over to the brown haired boy standing at the podium beside yours. The trial was in full swing and Makoto looked as pensive as everyone in the room did, but he still remembered to keep a tight, reassuring grip on your hand as you stood in the space next to his. While preoccupied with pinning the culprit, there was still a part of his mind focused on comforting you.

“Does no one have any objections? Do you accept what Kirigiri is saying?”

After receiving only silence , Byakuya sighed. “I see. We have no choice but to accept it. It wasn’t Kirigiri who put the locker key in her room, but someone else.”

“But.. who is ‘someone else’? Toges, you had Kiri’s key, right?” Hiro questioned.

“Yes, but I have an alibi. After 10 p.m., I was with you all. It’s not possible for me to have murdered Mukuro Ikusaba or to have put the key in Kirigiri’s room.”

“Then who did put the key in Kiri’s room?” Byakuya was quick to answer Hiro again. “There’s only one reasonable possibility- He had the key with him and pretended as though he found it in Kirigiri’s room.” “You’re talking about... Naegi?” Aoi’s voice cracked a bit as she spoke, a look not unlike betrayal clouding over her soft features.

“That’s the only explanation.”

“That’s not possible,” You spoke up without a second thought, though your voice was weaker than you had intended, “While we were investigating in the bio lab, Makoto gave me his jacket, and there definitely wasn’t anything in his pockets then. We went straight to the garden so he could meet with Byakuya after that, so he couldn’t have stopped to get it. If it wasn’t in his jacket, where else would he have been able to hide that bulky key without you noticing he had it?”

“Hm, I suppose that is a fair point. It would have been rather difficult to conceal it just beneath his shirt..” Byakuya looked away again in thought, seemingly satisfied with your reasoning.

“He actually took off his jacket? I didn’t think he ever took that thing off...”

“Oh yeah, he totally did! (Name) was still wearing it when they came into the garden! She even had her hands in the pockets,” Aoi confirmed to Yasuhiro, her voice brighter now that her friend didn’t seem like the culprit.

“You had his jacket, (name)?” Kyouko raised her hand to her chin in thought, “It’s true that Makoto clearly didn’t have the key in his pocket when he gave her his jacket, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in his pocket when he got it back.”

“Huh?”

Other than Makoto, Kirigiri was the student you trusted the most. You’d covered for her multiple times, and followed her command even when you didn’t understand her motives or reasoning. You had offered to let her stay in your room with you last night when Byakuya confiscated her key. In a normal high school scenario, you wouldn’t have hesitated to call her one of your best friends.

She couldn’t possibly be implying what you thought… right?

“If the key wasn’t in his pocket this morning and he never stopped back at his dorm, he couldn’t have had it when the murder took place. Yet somehow it was in his pocket by the time he needed to plant it in my room,” she spoke with an almost chilling certainty. “There was only one person who would have had the opportunity to pass the key off to him in time.”

She sounded calm, not at all like someone accusing their friend of murder.

“Hold on-” Makoto raised his hands defensively, unintentionally tugging the one in your grasp away rather harshly. He wasn’t happy when he was under suspicion, but now she was accusing you?

But Kyouko didn’t yield.

“Makoto was the only person who could have placed the key in my room, but there’s only one person who could have had it when Mukuro was killed. There’s also only one person that Makoto would be willing to cover for- his girlfriend.”

“What?!” you practically spit out your response.

“H-hold on a second! That’s not what happened!” Makoto was reeling. “Let’s think things through again! There’s something at work behind the scenes here- there has to be! This whole class trial doesn’t make any sense, don’t you guys agree?! Mukuro Ikusaba, who we’d never seen before, suddenly shows up dead… and there’s a class trial for it?! A- and Kirigiri was saying, too, that this is all a trap set by the Puppetmaster! So it’s gotta be-”

Monokuma’s shrill voice cut off Makoto’s desperate rambling. “Okay! Time’s up!”

“What?”

“Time’s uuuup! The Class Trial is oooover! So there’s no need to talk about anything else!”

“W- what the hell? We’re out of time?” Makoto replied first, your reaction trailing quickly after.

“Hold on, what do you mean? That’s not fair!”

“We’ve never had a time limit!” Suddenly even Kyouko looked panicked, her restraint and conviction having vanished as the trail was definitively ended. There was no going back.

“All thanks to your tardiness, Kirigiri! ‘Cause of you, we were tight on time! With that said, you guys, it’s Ballot Time! Please cast your ballot using the switch in front of you!”

Makoto’s green eyes met yours as you both turned towards each other at the same time. The look of pure trepidation and disbelief etched onto his features must’ve mirrored yours perfectly.

“Ballot… time?”

“I’m… the culprit?” your voice was soft, almost too quiet for even your boyfriend beside you to hear it.

“N-no, that’s not right, guys-” Makoto was immediately shaking his head in shock and confusion, his hand reaching out for yours again desperately as he tried to make a last minute plea for them to believe him. Your words cut him off though, the panic fully setting in.

“That’s not right! I didn’t do it! Th- this doesn’t make any sense!”

“It’s time for another super exciting, heart-pounding punishment!!”

Your gaze directly snapped to Kirigiri, who looked even paler than usual- as if the weight of what her lies had caused was setting in. You’d had her back this entire time, and she blamed you. She framed you. “W- why me?”

“I have no illusions for earning your forgiveness, because all of this is my fault..” her response was simple and to the point, just like her answers always were. She was acting like she usually did, except that she’d just betrayed you in the most brutal way possible.

“Kirigiri, tell them-” Makoto made his own frantic appeal for her to clear this up, to do anything to stop them from ripping you away from him. He moved urgently, throwing his arms around you and clutching you to his chest. They couldn’t just execute you when you weren’t the actual culprit, right? This wasn’t how this game was supposed to be played.

Yet Monokuma insisted, and you were forcefully dragged away from your boyfriend’s secure embrace.

“Let’s get the ball rollin’! It’s punishment time!”

You have been found guilty. Time for the punishment!

The sharp fibers of the ropes around your legs and wrists dug into your skin, dispelling any chance you had at convincing yourself that this was just some bad dream. You could feel the frayed rope stabbing your skin, the sputtering of the conveyor belt below your desk, the shake that spread through the room with every

Thud

thud

Of the giant machine pounding into the ground behind you.

Almost against your own will, you were flailing against the chair, screaming and sobbing, begging for help. No one could help you, no matter how hard you screamed, and flailing only made the sharp rope cut into your skin more than it already was.

This wasn’t how this was supposed to end. You’d promised Makoto that the two of you would take down the Mastermind and get out of here together, yet somehow, you’d ended up in the execution chair. For a crime you didn’t commit. This was it, this was how you went. You had lost and there was nothing you could do about it.

You were going to be blackened, and you had to accept it.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you tried to calm yourself, though your chest still shook with sobs.

You thought of Makoto. You thought of how he’d been so reassuring and supportive during your time here. How he’d pull you into his side when you got too overwhelmed, or hold your hand when you investigated together. How warm he felt when he’d squeeze you into a tight hug, or how nice his jacket smelled when he let you wear it. How he could never tie his uniform tie correctly. How he had looked at you with pure love in his eyes that day while lying together under a sakura tree outside of the school, with the warm sun filtering through the petals onto your skin… when had that happened?

But a sudden new sound startled you and you opened your eyes without thinking. The heavy foot of the machine had frozen, and was now giving off a grating buzzing noise as if it was trying with all its power to still move, to still crush.

You almost missed it in your surprise, but out of the corner of your eye you caught a familiar face flash onto the screen in front of you. Alter Ego?

Then you were falling. The foot had stopped, but the conveyor belt had kept going and the desk rolled off of it, sending you flying backwards into the dark.

Your eyes opened slowly, fogginess swelling in your mind as you tried to remember what happened and where you were. Unfortunately, it only took a few moments for the violent memories of the trial and execution to come flooding back to you. The crushing block had halted, but then you fell backwards, still tied tight to the old wooden desk. Splintered bits of that desk lied around you, seemingly having shattered on impact. That same impact must've knocked you unconscious, but you were most definitely alive. Alter Ego had stopped the execution.

You weren’t sure where you had ended up at first; it wasn’t a part of the school you’d seen before. Considering the rancid smell and large piles of garbage, there was really only one place it could be- the bottom of the trash chute.

Pushing through the pounding headache pulsing from your neck, you stood to your feet to study your surroundings. Did you still have to watch out for Monokuma and the Mastermind, or had they presumed you to be dead? Had they all presumed you to be dead? Naturally your thoughts returned to Makoto- had he assumed you were dead? That thought made you feel even more nauseous than you had been from your probable concussion. There was a chance that everyone had written off trying to help you, even your boyfriend. You wanted to believe that he wouldn’t stop looking for you until he was absolutely certain you were gone, but your frayed nerves coaxed you to dwell on that feeling, that despair, of being totally forgotten.

Salty tears slipped onto your lips, the sudden taste snapping you back to reality a bit. You hadn’t even realized you were crying at first. What was the point of crying now? That wasn’t going to accomplish anything other than intensifying your dehydration. The only productive thing you could do was to search for food, water or a way out.

The large door at the front of the room was bolted shut. Of course it was. All of the food was rotten. Of course it was. With no way out and no food to eat, the only thing you could do was to give into the exhaustion- both mental and physical.

So you slept. You hadn't really slept since this killing game had started, and though this wasn't any less tense of a situation, it was the first time in a while where there wasn't anything to do. There was no investigating to do or people to watch out for. Down here, the only thing you could do was feed that need to sleep.

A loud thud shook the ground and startled you awake, your eyes immediately scanning the area cautiously. Nothing looked different at first, but you were certain that something heavy had just fallen down. Then you noticed that all too familiar green jacket peeking out of what must have been a new pile of trash bags.

"M- Makoto?!"

He groaned for a second, trying to recover from the rough landing, before his green eyes flickered open. They met with yours, and somehow, even in this twisted situation, his gaze still made your heart race.

"(Name)! You're okay!" The clumsy boy scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, trying not to slip on the trash he'd fallen down with. He barely wasted a second to steady himself before throwing his arms around you, pulling you into his chest as tightly as he could.

It almost didn't feel real, like maybe you'd hallucinated him out of desperation and hunger from the last day or so of being down here alone. You hugged him back just as tightly, as if he might slip away if you didn't cling to him. Despite the lingering scent of trash around you, he still smelled as comforting and nice as you remembered. He still ran his fingers through your hair soothingly like he usually did. He still felt like home.

He was really here, he'd come to save you.

After a few moments of clinging to each other in silence, he lifted his fingers from your hair, a soft gasp leaving his lips. “Your head was bleeding?”

“I guess I landed wrong,” you tried to joke, though your laugh was breathy and unconvincing. Your dizziness and headache implied a concussion, but you weren’t ready to volunteer that information to him yet. In turn he pulled away to look you over completely

“You look so much better than I expected though! I kinda thought maybe you wouldn't be..." He didn't dare finish that thought. He'd come entirely too close to losing you too many times for him to even say it out loud anymore. "I was really worried about you."

"I wasn't sure you'd come after me," you confessed softly, burying your face in his shoulder as you leaned into him again.

"I'll... always come after you." He pressed an endearing kiss to your messy, splayed hair as a flustered blush set in on his cheeks. Even after going through all of this together and being together like you had, Makoto still got embarrassed from affection and admitting his feelings so blatantly.

“I brought you food and water.”

He didn’t need to tell you twice. You reached out to grab what he was holding immediately. Simple bread and water had never seemed so delicious.

After waiting for you to finish eating, which admittedly didn’t take very long, he laced his long fingers with yours. “C’mon, we need to get you out of here.”

“How? That door is locked and there’s no way we can climb high enough to go back out through the trash chute..”

He flashed you that knowing, assured grin that you loved so much. It couldn’t have been more than a few days since you’d seen him, but seeing him smile at you like that again was enough to make you want to cry and cling to him tighter than you ever had before. Had there been no rush to get out of this hole, you would’ve done just that.

His free hand disappeared into his jacket pocket for just a second before returning into sight with a shiny silver key in its grasp.

“Kirigiri… gave you the Monokuma key?” After her dedicated attempt to frame you in the last trial, you weren’t too hopeful that she would be helpful in rescuing you. “Why?”

“It’s… a long story, that she wants to tell you herself, but she’s really close to figuring everything out. She’s the one who snuck me into the trash room and down the chute,” he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly with his free hand. “She’s waiting to let us out through the trapdoor there now. On the other side of that door there should be a ladder that leads back up.”

“She’s almost found the Mastermind?”

He nodded earnestly.

“Good. I want to get out of this stupid school. I want us to get out together.”

“Me too,” he promised softly, “But right now we have to get you out of this horrible place.”

#makoto naegi #danganronpa #trigger happy havoc #x reader #imagines #self insert #makoto x reader #rae writes

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aliceslantern · 5 years ago

Text

Give/Take, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 2

Ienzo has been too busy since the war to be overwhelmed by the past. But with little progress to be made in his work with Kairi, old nightmares start to invade.

Riku is a glorified housesitter. Lonely and faced with no choice but to wait for a way to find his friends, he eagerly accepts when Ienzo asks him to help do repairs around the castle. Before long, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, united by their dark pasts and their attempts to be better people.

But just as they begin to consider something more... Kairi wakes up.

Ienzoku (Ienzo/Riku), post-Melody of Memory, slow burn. Updates Thursdays until it's done.

Chapter summary: Ienzo and Ansem have an honest conversation about his time as Zexion. Riku is restless.

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

Ienzo thought often about sleep. Most of his days were preoccupied with sleep, and hearts, and trying to remember what he had studied years ago. In the intervening years in the Organization, he had cared less about hearts and more about Kingdom Hearts.

Hearts. Sleep. Old men passive-aggressively jabbing at each other.

His hands were on the keyboard, and he saw code slowly and steadily ticking in. Code he should subsequently be de coding. But he… felt…

Ansem’s hand on his shoulder startled him, making him gasp aloud like a startled animal. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Ienzo shook the fuzz out of his eyes, his heart still pounding in his chest, adrenaline making him shaky. All of these human reactions were so sensorily intense . “It’s… it’s alright. I was the one far away.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” He stood, feeling woozy. “I’m…” He pressed two fingers to his brow, trying to hide the dizziness.

“How long have you been here?” Ansem asked softly.

Ienzo blinked, and realized, “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you go get some rest?”

“I don’t need rest, I need to keep working through this.” He scowled. “It doesn’t help that my memory of coding is hazy at best--”

“Then why don’t you let me help you? I can give you a refresher on the basics.” He smiled kindly, and Ienzo felt an unexpected stab of memory--sitting as a small child on Ansem’s lap as he taught him the very basics of HTML, his eyes gleaming with pride at Ienzo’s first project (a page that simply said “HELLO!”).

But then, equally… his eyes flicked over to the closed door to the lab, the one he’d begged Ansem to finalize. And he was reminded for the millionth time that this was his fault.

“Would that help?” Ansem prompted.

He shook his head to dismiss the memories. “Yes. Yes, that would be prudent.”

“When was the last time you slept?” Ansem asked.

“I’m fine.”

He frowned.

“Really. I’m fine.”

There was a pause. Ansem knotted his hands together. “Naminé once told me that Nobodies do not need sleep. Is that true?”

Ienzo’s eyebrows shot up. Ansem hadn’t brought up the reality of their pasts--namely, the ten years he and Even had been Nobodies. “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “One physiologically can , of course, but it is not necessary to live.”

Ansem pursed his lips. “Does it feel… odd, to return to those needs, then?”

Ienzo considered, woozily. “Yes, it does,” he admitted. “I feel like I’m losing a lot of time from my day.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally said, “do you like being human again?”

“Well, I had no say in the matter,” he said, “but it is… better than being the monster I was. I…” He rested his hand on his chest, feeling the pound of his heart. “I like having choice.”

Ansem smiled. “I’m sure you must.”

Ienzo exhaled. “I’ve done a great many awful things,” he said. “I wasn’t… a passive captive. Were it not for Saїx’s machinations, I likely would’ve been second in command. I… cared for their goals. I wanted it.”

Ansem cocked his head. “To be whole?”

“I don’t think so.” Ienzo squinted, trying to remember how it had felt to be Zexion. “In pursuit of… knowledge. Of growth of the Organization. I’m… I’m sorry.” Guilt hardened into a sour seed in his stomach, making him nauseous. “I’m so sorry.”

Ansem digested this, his eyes going somewhere distant and sad. “It says a lot about who you truly are, that the moment you were whole again, you chose the path of light,” he said gently.

“It does not feel that way.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “But we’ve all done things we regret. There’s no changing the past, as paltry as that sounds. Helping Kairi, and ergo, Sora and Riku… is a good first step.”

“I’m not sure it will ever be enough.”

“You can’t help how you grew up,” Ansem said. “In darkness, in nothing, manipulated, I’m sure, by them. You were just a boy. You said so yourself. How old were you, Ienzo?”

“Just shy of nine,” he said, not wanting to make eye contact.

“Precisely. A brilliant child… but still a child.”

“But what of--when I grew older? When I should have known better?”

Ansem squeezed his shoulder a second time. “By then you already believed.”

“I’m not innocent. I… the things I’ve done…” He exhaled. “I cannot simply absolve myself of guilt. I… I don’t want to.”

“I do hope that someday you can forgive yourself,” Ansem said. “You’re too young to live with such a heavy heart.”

“I think it is earned,” Ienzo said.

Ansem sighed.

“I’m going to go try to sleep for a few hours,” he said. “I’m sorry to leave this all in your lap.”

“It’s quite alright. I don’t mind.”

Ienzo wasn’t sure what else to say, so he started walking back to his room. He thought about what Ansem had said. His heart did feel heavy--quite literally. But how could he just… move on and have a normal life after everything he’d done? He didn’t know of anyone who’d messed up as colossally as he had. Wouldn’t it be wrong ? Masturbatory, so to speak? Where was his karmic payback? Why had he gotten this wholeness so many craved so dearly? He didn’t even want --

There had to be some way to silence the noise in his head.

Ienzo took a quick shower, put on some pajamas, and climbed into bed. His bedroom felt more cluttered and cramped than he remembered, the window by his double bed drafty. The overburdened bookcase was packed two and three deep, the rolltop desk flooded with yet more papers. He should clean and organize, remove the very last of his childhood things; there was still kid’s clothing in some of his dresser’s drawers.

His mind was swimming hopelessly with memories of the Organization’s plans to take down worlds--

Somehow, Ienzo fell into a restless sleep.

He recognized this dream, this nightmare. The tight, dark corners of the basement of Castle Oblivion. A redheaded demon, a boy in a black-and purple jumpsuit. A sharp glove at his throat, the tight heat of darkness swallowing him, and he couldn’t breathe couldn’t breathe--

Ienzo sat up. Slowly. He touched the scar at the base of his throat, thick and ridged. It was the darkness, not the replica’s sharp gloves, that had left this mark on him. Tears burned his eyes. He felt pathetic, weak, for being in the grip of this memory. It was over with. It was the least of what he’d deserved.

Human.

He thought of the dizzy spin of those first few moments after he’d woken, on the cold lab floor, bleeding from the marks around his throat. How the swelling had made it feel like he couldn’t breathe, still, how everything felt like it was echoing loudly around him, his heart like a weight in his chest. Trying to push himself up, seeing Even and Dilan’s brutalized forms, Aeleus trying not to show how much pain he, too, was in. Being the least injured, it had been up to Ienzo to try and tend to their wounds. At least he’d had the foresight to study medicine in the Organization.

And truthfully, even though it had been nearly two months back in this body, with this heart, Ienzo… still was not used to humanity, the pulse and pound of unexpected emotions. Once he couldn’t get open a jar of peanut butter for his breakfast toast and the anger he felt when he struggled was so overwhelming he’d just thrown the damn thing. But more than anything he felt a guilt so thick it was like lead, and an anxiety he could never fully set this right.

He looked at the clock. He’d slept about five hours, which he supposed after that nightmare was all he’d get. He was feeling nauseous and achy again, shaky with low blood sugar. So much time I must spend doing maintenance on this body. It seemed almost like a waste.

But he needed to stay alive. To help, to atone.

Ienzo got up and went to the kitchen.

---

Riku couldn’t take the silence anymore. It was almost making him jumpy, and after so long without human interaction, he thought he was starting to hear sounds that weren’t there. The dizzy nightmares of that city didn't help. He wondered if he should tell Ienzo and the others about it; but every time he tried to remember fine details, all he could recall was the deep blue color of the sky. Not helpful.

If not for the gummiphone, Riku would’ve lost track of time, too. Ienzo had told him how to use it, but he still struggled a bit with the interface. But, he figured, if Sora , who had nearly failed their high school computer literacy course, could grasp it, so could he.

Sora.

Riku felt something like a stab of pain. It felt like it had been a long time since he’d seen him, since they’d gotten to do more than chat for a few minutes. Kairi, too, he’d barely gotten to speak with at the beach during their brief victory party. At least he knew she was--physically--okay.

He felt so… alone.

He took a deep breath in and let it out, slowly. I’m not alone, he forced himself to think. Even if it feels that way. Our hearts are connected.

That didn’t make the silence any less piercing.

Riku got up. He had to go get some laundry, make himself something to eat. At least this was something he could do.

He wondered if it were too soon to go back to Radiant Garden. He knew Ienzo said he’d call the moment something came up, but maybe Cid had something new, or maybe there were even some Heartless to fight. Something. Someone.

“Oh god, I’m losing my mind,” he said out loud. He took out the gummiphone and looked down at its screen. It was still set to the generic background it came with, mostly because he didn’t know how to change it. With clumsy thumbs, he opened the text messaging app and started to write. The keyboard felt awkward in his hands.

Mickey,

I hope your journey with Donald and Goofy is going well. I’m guessing it must be good to spend time with them again. How’s the Queen?

I’ve been staying in the Land of Departure. Terra asked me to, but I think it’s partially because he wanted me to feel like I had an official duty as a Keyblade master. Mostly it’s just housesitting. If you ever have time, you three should come by. It’s a lot prettier than Castle Oblivion. It feels more alive.

The Radiant Garden guys are still hard at work studying Kairi’s heart, so she’s been asleep. They warned me it might take a long time. I still wish there was something I could do, but the power of waking won’t help in this case. So they say, anyway. I don’t really understand it fully myself.

If there’s anything I can do to make your journey any easier, let me know. Take care of yourselves out there.

--Riku

This written, it didn’t make Riku feel any less alone. More like he was speaking out into nowhere. He went and finished his chores, worked out for a little while. When he came back there was a response.

Howdy Riku!

Great to hear from ya! The Queen and Daisy are both doing great. We actually got to talk to them last night--love these nifty gadgets! If only we’d had them years ago… can you thank Ienzo for them the next time you see him? Chip and Dale also say hello to you both.

So far we’re doing our best to find more information about Sora, but so far there are no leads that I can tell, anyway, and you know how sharp Goofy is looking for these things. This all got so complicated… but I have hope that we’ll all be together soon!

I hope you’re not getting too stir crazy up in there. If you like, the Queen says you’re welcome to visit any time. And if we’re in the area I’m sure we’ll drop by! I hope staying there isn’t too hard on you.

Thanks for writing! Speak soon.

--Mickey.

Riku exhaled. He was positive he was reading too much into the tone of the letter. Mickey was never condescending towards him. Every word he’d written, he’d meant.

Maybe Riku should get out of here. He could thank Ienzo, for one thing, maybe help with some Heartless there, or the restoration committee was always working on some project or another. Get his hands dirty, like the work he used to do on the play island--

He was used to the accompanying stab of pain he got when he thought of them, but it didn’t make it any easier. Yes. Riku very much needed to get out of here.

---

It was raining in Radiant Garden when Riku got in. It washed away the rest of the gel in his hair, making it fall hopelessly into his eyes, and he kept trying to blow it out of his face. The haircut had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, something to get rid of that old self, but this current in-between length was unbearable. He didn’t want to think about spikes or spiky hair. (The fact that he’d run out of hair gel was also besides the point.) He wandered the streets for a time. Just seeing other people was nice, made him remember he was real.

The slope up to the entrance of the castle was muddy in the deluge. At least I’ll have an excuse to do laundry when I get back, he thought. One of the guards--he didn’t remember their names yet, and decided he really should--waved him in. “Try not to track mud all over the place,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Riku washed off his shoes with a water spell and kept walking. The place was always dank and damp in the best of circumstances, but today it was downright cold. He shivered and wished he knew air magic, something to dry himself off. Oh well. He’d had worse recently than being a little cold and wet.

The path up to the lab was very much familiar now. He saw places where the people here were trying to repair all the structural issues; the moldy carpeting torn up, the fallen pipes cleared away. The circular office before the lab had been cleaned up too; the bits of broken glass were finally gone.

Riku saw them before they saw him. He observed them for a few minutes, in their long white coats and oddly formal scarves. He tried not to audibly shiver, his hair sending droplets onto the floor.

“All looks… very much ordinary , from what we’ve been able to decipher,” the one formerly known as Vexen was saying. “Would help if I could understand your shorthand.”

Riku saw a scowl cross Ienzo’s face, the first mean expression he’d seen on the young man since they’d met again. He thought of Zexion, all claws and cruelness and teeth. “My shorthand is up-to-date. It’s not my fault your knowledge of coding has fallen by the wayside.”

“Boy, I have more important things to do--”

“Like what? Is this not our priority?”

“ She is our priority. Keeping up with some language is not.”

“Your sniping does not help either,” Ansem the Wise added. He went over to the console computer, punched some things in, and shook his head. “Though I agree with Ienzo that we should all at the very least be on the same page.”

Ienzo’s smirk became a hesitant smile.

Then, “I think we can all use a crash course.”

The smile became a scowl again. Riku chuckled despite himself. So the politeness was partially an act. Good to know. He crossed over into the hallway, letting his footsteps make more noise than earlier. Their heads snapped up; Even seemed to struggle to get his expression to be neutral, while Ansem offered a kindly smile. Ienzo’s face simply went blank, and Riku felt an odd surge of jealousy for his control over his emotion. “Oh, hello, Riku. We weren’t expecting you,” he said.

“I’m sorry just to drop by like this,” he said, feeling a blush color his face. “But I was wondering if--” Seeing their faces fall just slightly, “there’s… no news, is there?”

Ienzo took a few steps closer to him. He always seemed to be a little… cautious, in the way he moved around Riku. Could this really be about the bad blood in their past? “I’m very sorry, but no. No significant change.”

He glanced over towards Kairi, still fast asleep in the chair. He noted that at least they’d given her a blanket. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s being kept very comfortable, I assure you,” Ienzo said. “Neurological functioning is the way it should be.”

He crossed his arms, trying to suppress the shivering; it was even colder in here. “Could I… can I go up to her? It won’t interrupt anything, will it?”

Ienzo shook his head. “She’s too deeply asleep to be disturbed by our voices. Though perhaps--” Looking him over and wrinkling his nose. “You might like a towel?”

Riku looked at his palms. His wrist braces were awkwardly wet, and he knew they’d take hours to dry out. “Sorry. It’s, uh, raining.”

He nodded. “Come with me.”

He followed Ienzo. He was only the slightest bit taller than Riku now, but his strides seemed long, quick and precise, the white coat flaring out. “If you’d like, I can get you something dry to wear,” he said. “We’re probably about the same size.”

The idea of dry clothes was appealing, but the idea of wearing something of Ienzo’s made him feel, well, pretty weird. “No, that’s okay, thanks,” he said. “I’m probably gonna head out before too long anyway.”

“I imagine you must be quite busy.” Ienzo opened a door to a very average linen closet and pulled out a white towel. Riku did feel much better with it around his shoulders.

He just shrugged in response. They started walking back.

“If you’re worried about her health, she’s in quite good hands,” Ienzo said. “I… understand why you might be hesitant.”

“It’s… not that.” Not entirely. “I just…”

“Worry about your friends?” Ienzo prompted. “I can imagine. Yes, it’s been… a rather tectonic year or so.”

“We’ve all been separated on and off since our world fell,” he said, feeling a stab of guilt. “Though that was… kind of my fault. Not kind of. It was .”

Ienzo’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?”

“I know, I know. Some hero, right?” he forced himself to laugh.

“I… know that feeling exactly.” Ienzo cleared his throat. “Were it not for all we’ve done here… well.” He sighed. “We cannot… change the past. Not without a lot of nonsense.”

Riku smiled a little despite the heaviness of the conversation. “It almost feels… fake, how all this happened. When I heard about the… vessels, and the time travel, I was just like… are you kidding me? ”

Ienzo chuckled. “I think we all had that reaction. Even I cannot comprehend what exactly he was planning to do--and I was part of some of it.”

Riku thought about that laugh for a moment, how different it sounded than Zexion’s. More human, softer. Then again, the boy next to him was human. Trying to be better. Aren’t we all, he thought, wryly.

Back in the lab, he crossed over to Kairi and took her hand, hoping his wasn’t too cold. Her breathing was deep and even, and she looked peaceful. He wondered if she actually felt that way, what the “examination” made her feel. He almost asked, but Ansem and Even seemed to be deep into some conversation he couldn’t understand, and Ienzo seemed distracted, his brows furrowed. “So, uh,” he began slowly. “How’s the Heartless population around here?”

He looked up, startled. “The claymore defense system manages it quite well,” he said, with a touch of defensiveness. “Though I guess there might be a few hanging around the edges of town.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “Well. I’m going to go check in with the committee. But before I go. Um. The King said thank you for the gummiphone. And that Chip and Dale said hello.”

“Of course,” he said, his expression again quite neutral. “That was kind of them.”

Riku took off his damp towel and folded it. He left the castle and went back out into the rain. If anything, the deluge had gotten heavier, to the point where his left wrist (which had never quite healed correctly) was throbbing. Ienzo had been right about the Heartless; the few ones in the center of town were easily dispatched without him even having to draw his Keyblade. Riku found himself scowling. Logically, he knew that the system was fantastic for the civilians here. But it took from him the only thing he could do to be of use. As it grew darker, he wandered farther and farther into the fissures surrounding town, where he finally found something worth fighting.

He tried to vent his frustration into these Heartless, especially at his own uselessness. He was a Keyblade master , and all he could do was beat up a few mooks, was wait around for things to happen. He hated feeling like this; it was so like the old days on the island. At least this time he wouldn’t do something so off-the-walls stupid like let a creep in a robe persuade him to do what they wanted.

No, instead he was fighting Heartless. Alone. In the rain.

By the time he’d fought the last one in the vicinity, it was dark, and he could no longer suppress the shaking. “Idiot,” he said out loud. The clothes might protect him from darkness, but they wouldn’t protect him from the common cold. He should go back to the Land of Departure, take a hot bath, make himself some soup, and go to bed.

Riku went deeper into the fissures.

#give/take #ienzo #riku #ienzoku #ienzo/riku #ienzo is trans

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years ago

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The Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative as pertains to the Perpetual Virginity of Mary and the brothers and sisters of Jesus, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, dear Reader, “so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings” on these two very inter-related topics (cf. Luke 1:1, 3-4). They are the perpetual virginity of Mary and the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Both are topics that seem to cause more than a few words of disagreement.

Many articles have been written about the two — most are about whether or not Jesus had brothers and sisters. So, here…let us begin.

Mary’s Encounter With the Angel

For this we go direct to Sacred Scriptures. In Luke’s Gospel we are told that the Angel Gabriel is sent to a young woman and we learn four amazing things. The first is that the young woman is a virgin – in Greek, παρθένος (parthenos). She is the παρθένος foretold in Isaiah 7:14 – “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel”. Some will point out that the term used in Is. 7:14 is עַלְמָה (“almah”, which is Hebrew) and simply means “maiden” but the Greek Septuagint which were the Scriptures in use by the time of Jesus (and still in use in the Catholic and Orthodox churches today) uses παρθένος.

The second point about this heavenly encounter is that the angel greeted her with a term which “greatly troubled” (1:29) Mary: χαῖρε κεχαριτωμένη (Chaire Kecharitomene) which means “Rejoice, Full of Grace”. This is the only time in all of Sacred Scripture that anyone is greeted in such a lofty manner. It is not used here as a description, however, but as her actual name. The angel does indeed call her by her given name of Μαρία (Maria) in v. 31 but his intent in v. 29 is to call her Full of Grace.

According to notes on the term χαῖρε κεχαριτωμένη it is a verb. It is a “perfect participle passive” and is in the “nominative feminine singular”.

The (unknown) author of the website, (kecharitomene.com) explains that “Full of Grace” translates kecharitōmĕnē asthe perfect passive participle of charitŏō. It denotes one who has been and still is the object of divine benevolence, one who has been favored and continues to be favored by God, one who has been granted supernatural grace and remains in this state”.

A side note: It is because of the angel’s greeting of “Rejoice, Full of Grace” that many people now begin the Hail Mary with “Rejoice, Full of Grace” rather than “Hail Mary”.

The third point is Mary’s response to the angel: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” (Luke 1:34) This tells us most plainly that Mary was indeed a virgin at the time of the Annunciation.

The fourth point is that the angel explains the role of the Holy Spirit to her and finishes with the (likely) most-often quoted line from the Annunciation narrative: “…for nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1:37).

Mary as Fulfillment

Mary’s pregnancy is not the first to come about through the intervention of God. In fact, there are at least five women of the Old Testament who were childless/barren. They are:

Sarah – The wife of Abraham. Sarah was barren but became pregnant by the power of God “at ninety”. She had long since been considered to have a “dead womb” and Abraham’s body to be “dead”. Their offspring was Isaac.

Rebekah – The wife of Isaac, the daughter-in-law of Abraham & Sarah. She was “very beautiful, a virgin, untouched by man”. Isaac was “forty years old”8 when he married her. “Isaac entreated the LORD on behalf of his wife, since she was sterile. The LORD heard his entreaty, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant”and she gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob.

Rachel – the wife of Jacob. “Like Sarah and Rebekah before her, Rachel experiences a long period of barrenness”. The emotional strife was so painful for Rachel and her desire for sons so great that she had demanded sons from Jacob shouting, “Give me children or I shall die!”11. To which he had replied in anger, “Can I take the place of God, who has denied you the fruit of the womb?”. Indeed, being childless was seen as a shameful thing, for without sons a woman lost her status in the community, having no-one to carry on the name or to care for her. “Then God remembered Rachel. God listened to her and made her fruitful. She conceived and bore a son, and she said, ‘God has removed my disgrace.She named him Joseph, saying, ‘May the LORD add another son for me!’”. She did indeed bear one more son whom she named Benjamin but she died in childbirth.

These three pregnancies are very important. According to Tikva Frymer-Kensky in her article on Rachel, “The infertility of the matriarchs has two effects: it heightens the drama of the birth of the eventual son, marking Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as special; and it emphasizes that pregnancy is an act of God”.

Two more women of the Old testament are found to be barren. One is a nameless woman known simply as the mother of Samson. “An angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her: Though you are barren and have had no children, you will conceive and bear a son “. The other woman is Hannah, wife of Elkanah; she had prayed to God “year after year”for a son because “the LORD had closed her womb”. Finally, after weeping bitter tears her prayer was answered because “the LORD remembered her”. His name is Samuel.

Elizabeth, wife of the high priest Zechariah is the only woman mentioned in the New Testament who is both “advanced in years and barren”. Their child is John the Baptist the forerunner of Jesus and of whom Jesus had said, “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist”.

And now there is Mary, spouse of Joseph the carpenter. A young virgin whose maternity is announced by an arch-angel, Gabriel. She is (as stated earlier) the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel”. All of the aforementioned pregnancies ultimately came about in the normal, unitive manner — the joining of “male and female” who become “one flesh”.

This time the angel assures Mary, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God”.

The Betrothal of Mary and Joseph

Here we switch our attention to the Gospel of Matthew, Ch. 1:18-25.

“Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the holy Spirit.Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly”.

Jewish marriages in the time of Jesus came about in two phases — the betrothal and then the actual wedding. Today’s marriages usually celebrate an engagement — but not always, and it is not mandatory. In the First Century the betrothal was a legal ritual where a man and a woman were promised to each other even though they were not yet living together. The betrothal lasted about one year during which time the groom would painstakingly build a room onto his parents’ house and making sure that it was just right for him and his new family. When all was ready, the marriage took place and then it was consummated. This Joseph would have been doing when he became aware that Mary was with child.

Unlike today’s engagements which, when they do not work out, are simply ended — whereas Joseph could actually file for a divorce from Mary for her infidelity as he had decided to do quietly until the angel intervened. Even though not “fully” married (consummated), Joseph was already called “her husband” (v. 19) and Mary was already Joseph’s “wife” (v. 20).

According to the Law the penalty for such infidelity was steep: “If there is a young woman, a virgin who is betrothed and a man comes upon her in the city and lies with her, you shall bring them both out to the gate of the city and there stone them to death…” (Deut. 22:23-24a)

But Joseph loved Mary as much as he loved the Law and so a quiet divorce would be his out. But again, the angel intervened. “Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her”. (Mt. 1:20)

One may object and speak of Mt. 1:25 — “He (Joseph) had no relations with her until she bore a son” (italics mine) but caution must be used about how words were used back then. Consider 2 Sam 6:3 — “Saul’s daughter Michal was childless until she died”. We know that she had no children after she died.

The Celibacy of Joseph

Here are two ways to know that Joseph never had sexual relations with Mary – even after the birth of Jesus. In his article, The Perpetual Virginity of Mary, Br. Anthony Opisso, M.D. refers to the Greek of Matthew’s Gospel by stating “The angel does not use the phrase for marital union: “go in unto” (as in Gn 30:3, 4, 16) or “come together” (Mt 1:18) but merely a word meaning leading her into the house as a wife (paralambano gunaika) but not cohabiting with her”.

He further states, “For when the angel revealed to him that Mary was truly the spouse of the Holy Spirit, Joseph could take Mary, his betrothed, into his house as a wife, but he could never have intercourse with her because according to the Law she was forbidden to him for all time”.

Why was Mary forbidden to Joseph? Opisso explains: “We also have to take into consideration that when Mary was told by the archangel Gabriel “Behold, you shall conceive in your womb, and bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus” (Lk 1:31), he also added that this was to come about because “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the Holy one to be born shall be called the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). By stating it in those terms the archangel declared to Mary that God would enter into a marital relationship with her, causing her to conceive His Son in her womb, for “to lay one’s power (reshuth) over a woman” (Targum to Dt 21:4) was a euphemism for “to have a marital relationship with her.” Likewise, “to overshadow” (Lk 1:35) by spreading the “wing” or “cloak” over a woman was another euphemism for marital relations”. Joseph understood then that Mary was the bride of the Holy Spirit.

Joseph’s role was as protector of Mary and as the foster father of Jesus. It is not known whether Joseph was an older gentleman or whether he had children from any previous marriage (or even if he had been previously married) but with Mary he remained continent the rest of his days. “When for the sake of the Torah (i.e., intense study in it), a rabbi would abstain from relations with his wife, it was deemed permissible, for he was then cohabiting with the Shekinah (the “Divine Presence”) in the Torah (Zohar re Gn 1:27; 13:3)”.

Even Moses had required the men to “Be ready for the third day. Do not approach a woman” when God had made known his plans to “come down on Mt. Sinai in the sight of all the people”. Jewish tradition mentions that, “although the people had to abstain from sexual relations with their wives for only three days prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai (Ex 19:15), Moses chose to remain continent the rest of his life with the full approval of God. The rabbis explained that this was so because Moses knew that he was appointed to personally commune with God, not only at Mount Sinai but in general throughout the forty years of sojourning in the wilderness”.

Mary’s Virginal Yes

Mary’s purity of intention and purity of heart go hand-in-hand with her virginal womb. Mary had no interest in any gain for herself in giving birth to God’s own son — hence, her reply: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word”. She knew very well what a pregnancy would mean to an unmarried woman but in her great act of faith and love of God she answered yes. Mary’s reaction to the Holy Spirit within her was to turn outward and “she traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth”. (Lk 1:39-40) We know the rest of that story — “how the child in Elizabeth’s womb had leapt for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice” and how Mary had praised and magnified the Lord for all he had done for her. Virginal Yes…virginal body — the two very much go hand in hand.

In the Old Testament — in the building of the ark for the covenant which were the two stone tablets containing the word of God given to Moses and the people — God dictated that the ark be built to certain specific dimensions and then “plate it inside and outside with pure gold, and put a molding of gold around the top of it”. How much more, then, should the “vessel” — the womb that was to carry the Word Made Flesh also be “lined” with pure gold, the gold of virginity of heart and body?

BY:CYNTHIA TRAINQUE

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

#perpetual virginity of mary

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pensamientosconfirma · 4 years ago

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Sometimes I come to realize how fast and change at the same time things change. I was recalling the first time I got my heart broken, the first time I fell in love... how deep and pure those emotions were. How strong they clinched to our inside and how we could feel them even in our smallest pore.

Like aire, like dust, like drops that ached or healed, that made us feel and experience for the first time.

I wonder if we spend our days just trying to reconnect with that immersive energy.

I see my days in the present and I can’t find myself. If somewhere in the journey I just stopped being. Like I lost my sense of emotions and pureness. Can you lose your sense of living for no particular reason? Is this just getting older? Does things just become normal and boring?

Aren’t there more emotions to explore?

As I recall my past I realize, it is not like they say... that you never know what you have until you lose it. I always knew. Since a very young age I can recall myself being aware of how all things change and stop. I was truly aware of what I had and I enjoyed a single minute of it. I can recall my different ages and scenarios, the chapters of myself and how I felt.

I can even live those emotions. I always knew I was a teenager, I enjoyed being 17 so fuckin much. I remember driving through the horizon in the afternoons, one friend driving, my best friend Mauricio on the copilot seat. And myself in the back seat just taking a mental picture, fully aware I was going to be back to that moment in the future, I can recall the thoughts and emotions. I can experience all of that specific second. And I wouldn’t trade a millisecond of it.

Way way back to kindergarten, I took another mental picture. I was coming back to my seat, by the window, where a stoop of grass was the scenario of multiple times imagining different stories and all but paying attention to the class. I held my little notebook on my hands, it was a blue notebook with the school logo on the cover and my name written by my mom. I remember I got to my seat and somehow I just realized that I wasn’t going to be there in the future. That was the first time I decided to freeze moments of my life in my memory. I froze the exact turn my body did to return to my seat. I froze the feeling. I even remember that night making sure I still got it in my mind. Since then I recall I became aware of time, and experience, and memories. Maybe I just an anxious kid who knows (I def was hahaha)

But the point is... I have always known what I have and what I’m living, I have always cherished my present; I understand nothing is permanent. I’m not trying to hold on to things or to never let go, is not about that... I just need to know If I will ever be able to feel that deeply again. To love someone so much you can’t breathe, to feel literal physical pain in your chest when that person leaves. To laugh so hard you cant stop, to sing so loud and feel so alive you just wanna cry.

As I grow older I have seen the cease of those emotions and it scares me to death. Because I wanna feel every single second of my life. That’s why I recall so many specific moments of myself, that’s why I can actually feel inside in the present how I felt during those times. But Those are corpses inside my mind, they do not live in the present moment. Am I just a shell then?

I don’t have fear for the future, it is peaceful and exciting for me. I just fear never being able to feel as deeply as I felt in certain moments of my life. I wanna fall in love again and feel it in my bones, I wanna laugh, and cry and feel those amazing butterflies in my stomach I used to love feeling when I was about to go on stage. I want to feel that electricity. That life inside of me.

I don’t know, maybe the past couple of years haven’t been the easiest. Am I not freezing this moment and enjoying what I have? Just because it is so normal?

I don’t... I do know where I lost myself, I just don’t know how to get me back. I know I’m looking, I’m looking for you dear girl. Trust me I am.

What if when we are born we are more connected to the source of life and as we grow older we are more connected to the source of death and endings. To every side there is a counter part. Maybe is just natural for humans to experience both. Can we learn to enjoy the stillness? Can we learn to feel deeply the nothing? Can we come to peace with being passive? Or is it just a fantasy? A boring dream?

Aren’t we awake then?

I know I’m living too much in the past, I know I must practice gratitude in the present. I know all of that. I just can’t seem to find myself in this chapter of my life. Maybe is the silent part in between seasons. Maybe my story is not finished yet.

I just wanna feel something.

My heart is so empty.

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hipsbef0rehands · 8 years ago

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Cresco Amor: Chapter 3

Author: @hips-bef0re-hands Timeline: Ties in with the canon of season 6 and 7 Rating: PG-13 (for now) Summary: How I think the ‘ship came to be

Part 1 and Part 2 found here

April 19th 1999

She sat at the desk thrumming her fingers against the wooden top. The office was cleaner, fresher. Likely from the renovations after the fire, combined with the fact that the former occupants never desired to make it any homier than a ficus in the corner. Of course the industrial cleaning of a mysterious bloodstain found on the floor added to the sterile feeling of the room. The blood was identified as Jeffry Spenders. The FBI assumed him to be dead based on blood loss, although no body had been found.

There were filing cabinets and a few standard FBI wall hangings. The walls were white, and on a sunny day, like today, the light shone in from the clean windows brightening the room. It felt bigger. It felt different.

Mulder used to keep the office a mess. On more than one occasion she had asked him to help her organize, make the place more conducive to working. ‘Organized chaos, Scully’ he would tell her. It was how he worked best.

It was not, however the way that she worked best. But it was his office and over time she would get used to working his way.

She had replayed the scenes from the past weeks in her head over and over again. Cassandra Spender demanding to be killed, the decontamination shower, her fight with Mulder over Diana Fowley. Each time she meticulously picked apart the events, she would become angrier. She hadn’t spoken with Mulder since their meeting with ADs Kersh and Skinner. They had been re-assigned to the x-files last week.

Scully felt like she should be happy about this, but the happiness felt compulsory. Was she happy, truly happy to be back on the X-files, or only proud that she and Mulder had gotten their way? She knew Mulder would be ecstatic, now fueled by the events and truths exposed in the past weeks, he would return to his post with renewed vigor. One that she wasn’t sure she shared at the moment.

“Murnin, Schull” he waked into the office with a McDonalds breakfast sandwich between his teeth, a cardboard box in his arms and a carefully balanced coffee cup on top. He bent down in front of her and raised his eyebrows, offering her the coffee. He walked over towards an empty shelf and plopped the box down unceremoniously. He removed the sandwich from his mouth.

“One sugar and a splash of whole milk.” He nodded towards her. Starting to unpack the box. She recognized its contents as old files he had salvaged after the fire and kept hidden during their time on manure patrol.

She sat quietly at the desk while Mulder buzzed around the room, unloading the contents of the box, flopping files down on the desk right in front of her.

“Damn, I miss that poster. I’m going to have to go to one of the college’s annual poster sales at the beginning of the semester and pick up another one. That is unless you want me to pick up a Backstreet Boys one for you” he said, turning his head towards her and wagging his eyebrows.

His attempt at humor was not well received. Scully continued with a blank stare.

“Mulder, I think I am going to take some time off.” She had been very thoughtfully formulating a way to tell him, but it abruptly came out of her mouth.

This time he turned to her with his whole body.

“Wha-what do you mean. We were just assigned…”

“I mean I am going to take some time off this week. We were just re-assigned, Mulder, and unless there is a current file in that box of yours, we aren’t going to be working on anything right away. I am going to take this time to decompress, to think about some things.”

It was his turn to give her a blank stare.

“What types of things did you want to think about?”

“Personal things” she spit out, almost too quickly. She knew she was being passive aggressive. Alluding to their conversation about Diana. She didn’t feel good about it. She could feel the acid starting to churn in the pit of her stomach.

How could he be this aloof, how could he expect everything to return to normal at the drop of the hat. How could he, still, after all this time be expecting her to turn her emotions, her frustrations on and off with some imaginary switch.

“Look Scully, I know that you and I had disagreements about the Cassandra spender case, but we are back on the X-files now, and it is going to be up to us to figure out the truth about what happened in that hanger. It’s our job again.”

“Our job,” she said plainly “Where should we start then? Are you still going to tell me that you believe Diana Fowley had nothing to do with what happened to those people?”

Mulder rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. He began to speak when she interjected.

“You know she hasn’t reported back to the FBI in a week, Mulder. Where did she go? Crawling back into the wood-work along with…”

“Enough.” He cut her off loudly.

She looked up at him stunned, then her face settled and softened.

“Mulder, this is why I need time off. I need to be able to process things in my way, not in yours. I will have my phone, keep me updated if Skinner assigns us anything. Otherwise I’m taking the rest of the week.”

She stood up from behind the desk, smoothed her skirt, and walked out of the office.

xxx

She breezed past him on the way out the door and he was left speechless. He knew that she was still angry about their fight over Diana but he didn’t know how to meet her in the middle. He knew he could be stubborn, but he also knew that he usually ended up being right about these things.

He and Diana had shared a tumultuous past, but he didn’t believe the ruler of the underworld himself could sway her into joining the dark side. They had their differences but he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, believe she would take part in all of this.

He began to unpack the contents of the first box and returned to his car for more.

Five hours later and he was fully unpacked. He sat down at the desk and picked up the phone to dial Scully.

#9 he punched to make an outside call, and hung up the phone.

He went over her words again and again in his head; ‘keep me updated if Skinner assigns us anything’ was basically Scully’s way of saying ‘don’t call me for anything else.’

In the past year, Mulder could feel a shift in their relationship. They had never discussed the events that took place in his hallway before she was infected with the virus. He wasn’t even sure if she remembered them, but he did.

‘There never seemed to be a good time to discuss it’ he would tell himself, followed by ‘that’s a lie and you know it.’

They had been spending time with one another outside of work on a more frequent basis, and there had even been times where he swore something more than friendship was developing. He just never wanted to ruin those moments with an awkward conversation.

He knew that Scully harbored jealousy for Diana but he woudn’t dare bring it up. He could imagine what Scully’s face would look like, what she would say to him if he did. And he knew it would be at least 10 times worse than anything he could imagine.

He thought again about calling her. He decided against it.

xxx

April 22nd 1999

*knock knock* “Dana?”

“Come in” she said, adjusting her paper gown.

“Dana, hello, its so good to see you.”

“Thank you again for seeing Linda, especially on such short notice.”

“Of course, of course” Dr. Perryman said, walking to Dana’s side and taking her hands warmly in her own. “Can’t be easy making appointments with a schedule like yours.”

Dr. Linda Perryman was an old friend of Scully’s from medical school. She was now working as a OBGYN at UMD and specializing with women who have fertility issues due to gynecological cancers and other pathologies. Scully had been following her work closely and decided to see if Linda would take her on as a patient given her unique set of circumstances. It had been almost 9 months since Scully was reunited with her stolen ova.

After a physical examination, Linda took Scully into her office. The room was decorated in various shades of cream and she had a bubbling water fountain on her desk. The room was comfortable and relaxing. Scully wondered how many women’s hopes and dreams died in this room and suddenly the calming décor seemed a lot more ominous.

“Dana, please have a seat.”

“Thank you.” Scully said sitting and gripping onto the arm rests. She took a deep breath.

“Dana, I am afraid that I can’t help you.”

Scully let out her breath in one rapid exhale. She was starting to feel sick. Although this is the answer she was expecting, she realized how much hope she was giving to that one small sliver of a chance to conceive.

“Dana?”

Scully looked up at the doctor.

“…Dana, on a professional level. I am afraid I am unable to help you. Unfortunately, because the ova were not removed and tended to by appropriate methods, I can not implant them, and as we suspected, upon examination it seems that you are unable to become pregnant on your own.”

“Which we already knew.” Scully said, slightly annoyed.

“Yes. Dana, have you heard about a Doctor James Parenti?”

“No”

“He is working on experimental treatments and he may be able to better serve you…. due to your, extremely odd set of circumstances. I can make a call, if you’d like.”

“Yes.” Scully said, he breathing slowly returning to normal. “Yes, please.”

xxx

As she waked into her apartment, she began to feel a tidal wave of emotions beginning to crack through her carefully constructed walls. She was hopeful for the possibility of becoming pregnant, she was angry that Mulder had kept the stolen ova from her for so long, and she was sad… sad that their partnership had hit a stalemate

It had been far too long since she had gone for a run, and if she was going to strongly consider fertility treatments, she knew it would be best for her body to be in top shape.

xxx

He was sitting on a bench along the mall, a stack of files to his left, and a meatball hoagie from subway on his lap when he saw her. She was jogging up the path towards him, he would know that red hair anywhere, even if it was tucked up beneath a sweatband.

He stood up and gave a goofy wave as she approached.

She stopped; putting her hands on her knees she took a few deep breaths.

“God,” she panted “I forgot how hard it was to start once you stopped doing this sort of thing.”

“Don’t I know it” Mulder said handing her his Dasani bottle.

Scully took a generous swig and handed it back to him.

“Thanks” she said looking over at the mess of files he had strewn across the bench. “Working hard I see.”

He shoved aside the files offering her a seat, which she gladly accepted.

“Want to hear the best ones we’ve got?”

She nodded

“Aliens possessed my dog,” he read, she laughed. “Swamp monsters spotted in Florida…”

“… ah, seen that one before” she quipped.

“And my personal favorite, he said holding up a supermarket tabloid, Elvis is alive… and he’s an alien.”

“Mulder,” she warned. “You can’t be serious.”

There was a moment of silence before he spoke.

“How’s the time off?” He asked.

“Good. I’ve made a few appointments I’ve been meaning to make, visited my mom, cleaned out some old junk in my closet… its been good, some time to clear my head.”

“Do some thinking.” He said plainly.

“Mulder.” She said, turning to him. “I am not leaving the X-files. I know that’s what you are thinking.”

He turned to look at her. It was what he had been thinking, but he wouldn’t admit it.

“I am just starting to feel a little, constrained lately.”

“Scully, if this is still about Diana…” he started.

“It isn’t just about Diana, Mulder. It’s about a lot of things, but most recently yes, it’s about that situation. You and I, we have always had a trust, an understanding… us against the world and all that.”

Mulder paused for a moment, considering his next statement.

“Scully, do you remember last year, before you were taken?”

She was quiet, he started to think that maybe she didn’t remember, the virus had hit her so fast and had her under it’s influence for so many hours; it must have affected her memory.

“The hallway?” She asked.

“Yes, the hallway. I said I don’t want to do this alone, but I meant that I don’t want to do this without you.” He took a deep breath. “Scully, I trust Diana, but I would never let her come between us.”

“Mulder,” she said, biting her lip and looking down at her knees. “You’re making it sound like we are a married couple.”

“Well….” he said shrugging his shoulders.

Their eyes met and he smiled. “We kind of are, if you think about it”

She looked at him quizzically.

“I mean we are as good as. I’ve never been this close to any partner.” He meant that.

She nodded in agreement.

“I guess you are right.”

“Can I get you to write that down?” Mulder said with a chuckle as she shot him a ‘watch it’ look.

“Look, all I’m saying is that you don’t have to be jeal….”

“Woah, woah, woah!” she demanded. The words had only slipped from his mouth. He regretted them almost immediately.

“Jesus you’re acting like I’m some jealous co-ed.”

“No, Scully. That’s not what I mean. I mean…” he bit his lower lip and looked up towards the sky. Choosing his next words very carefully.

“I know that there is nothing… like that… going on between us, Scully… but I’m saying I’d like to think that maybe someday….”

Her eyes were instantly glued to his. She was not going to speak; she needed to hear everything he was about to say before she stopped him.

“I don’t know, I just think that maybe it won’t always have to be this way.” He took the easy way out.

They were silent for a few awkward minutes.

“I got word today, that Special Agent Diana Fowley is still at the FBI and now in the Intelligence Department.”

Scully rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I bet she is.”

“But we have the X-files back, Scully. You and me.”

“Mulder, I need to know, that I have your full trust going forward.”

“Always.” He said simply.

“You know that I will be right there with you, doing this work… of ours, but I need to know that you will be right there with me, that you will listen to me, and you will trust me.”

He nodded his head, understanding, as best he could, what she was saying.

“Then I will see you at work on Monday.” She rose from the bench and stretching her left quad muscle. “That office better still be clean.”

She started to make her way back to Georgetown with an uneasy feeling. She had not been totally honest with Mulder. She had not told him about her renewed pursuit for conception. She was not sure how she would bring it up. She didn’t know what it would mean for her work at the FBI, for their partnership. She promised to always stand with him. But she knew in her heart, she may have to break that promise. She ran the 3 miles home, allowing the cooling spring air to burn in her lungs as attempted to clear her mind.

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phantomauthor · 8 years ago

Text

hoo boy here goes

cw: abuse mentions

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

nnnnope! no siblings and no close family outside his immediate family

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

as a child it was really rocky, as his father wasn’t. the Greatest and she took her frustrations out on him in the form of verbal abuse. after he had gone to live in america for a year and came back, she had gotten better and their relationship started to get better. currently it’s still not great as you can’t really, grow past abuse, but, it’s better than before. he relies on her and loves her still but there’s always that feeling of hurt.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

not. good. his father was extremely abusive to both him and his mom, physically, verbally, emotionally, etc. after moving to america and living with just his dad for a year, it stayed almost the same and turned jamie around completely from how he was before. so his dad is not, exactly on great terms with him

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

the....fourth or fifth murder in the game is what really got to him i think. from a “eh this will be over with soon” to just “oh. this is serious.” kind of mood and it does Not make him feel good. he tries to keep this under covers since he does have an image to maintain, but who knows if others have picked up on this.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

his phone, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. if he’s going out to the store you’ll find a wallet in there with his money and school id and whatever ids else you can find there.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

not really? he tends to have those kind of weird dreams where everything is a wild ride though

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

a lot of them have to do with being unseen unless he does something extravagant. as of late he’s been having many dreams of him in other people’s bodies finding himself/his mom/candy dead, and not caring about it.

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

nope!

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

nope! he’s always been pretty well off, around the upper middle class.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

more clothing.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

he’s had, several near death situations in a variety of ways. bad abuse from partners, accidents, depression, and the killing game. outside of death he doesn’t really have any fears, so any time he feels like he’s about to it scares him to near death (lol).

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

he’s EXTREMELY calm around candy, the calmest i think would have to be when he could just, lay with her and sleep next to her.

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

heck no he loves blood and gore

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

he remembers faces easier! names he tends to forget

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

not..exactly? he grew up well off so he hasn’t had any hardships but he also wasn’t super rich and doesn’t exactly have interests so it’s not too hard to avoid that.

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

happiness

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

i like to think he had cat stuffed animal that he carried around

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

wisdom. he’s a sapiosexual

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

platonic relationships, he doesn’t know how to exactly, talk to people. he’s never really had friends and his one friend he made on complete accident (invited her to live with him on accident, she took it up, they grew close and suddenly were friends), so he doesn’t know WHAT to do to be appealing to speak to. candy is generally okay with this as she’s not great with it either and their relationship was built on trust and compassion more than speaking. romantic relationships he can’t stay loyal as he gets bored extremely easily. it’s really hard to get to what actually keeps him interested in someone and this. ruins a lot of relationships and causes rumors quite often

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

in a way, he tends to think of himself as a different category than everyone he meets, putting himself apart from them. it’s more of a isolation tactic than anything, but can be considered self-validation. he has been catching himself criticizing himself lately when comparing himself though as time goes on in this situation.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

he does blame himself for what happens, fully believing he may have done something in this life or a past life to cause bad things to happen to him.

What does your character like in other people?

well, wisdom is one. but he likes how people think, and you’ll often catch him analyzing others actions to see how they think. he likes people who are more critical of what they’re doing and can admit to their faults with ease. though, he also does like to see stubborn people when he knows they’re in the right. he also tends to gravitate more towards people he finds to be similar to him

What does your character dislike in other people?

he DOES NOT LIKE people who are too sure of themselves, too full of themselves, or both. negative people he tends to avoid as well. he’s not really judgy outside of that tbh.

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

he’s a generally trusting person tbh. unless someone gives him reason to distrust right off the bat he’ll probably hold some trust in them.

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

even the smallest of relations to something can cause suspicion in him, ofc there’s exceptions (i.e. michiko during genta’s murder) but he’s not easily trusting in that. it changes slightly if he’s close but he does like to stay true to how he normally puts himself out as.

How does your character behave around children?

he’s pretty good around children tbh he’s a dad character

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

on a bad day, badly, maybe even taking it near to a physical fight. he’s not exactly good at controlling himself if he’s upset. though on a good day, he’ll just go along with whatever he’s being confronted for, apologize or w/e, and go on with his day.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

like i stated before, on a bad day it is a very quick reaction to start violence but he holds himself back as much as he can

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

he never had something he wanted to be, it wasn’t ever something he thought of. tbh he still doesn’t know what he wants to be or do, he’s just...living.

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

abuse, violence, arrogant people

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

sitting at home on the couch in the living room, the tv is on as candy plays one of her exploration games (or s/t like bloodborne, i’m sure that’s a game he’d enjoy watching) as the two of them talk casually about their days or their plans for the next day.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

i feel gross thinking about it and it’s not even that bad i’d rather not. just gonna say it’s gotta do with his, promiscuity

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

he’s just. okay with it? maybe a lil defensive but for the most part he’s just like aight cool. he might be willing to improve

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

immediately move on to a different solution/method

How does your character behave around people they like?

he’s pretty friendly and likes to joke around! really chill and touchy feely. he also feels more comfortable being silent but around them

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

he’s. super passive aggressive. constantly watching the other person in case of attack and to try and find out what’s going on in their mind- especially if he knows they also don’t like him.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

protecting his status definitely. he’s kind of proud of it and it’s all he has so. he’s got to.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

remove a problem/threat. he’s not afraid to get into shit even if it’ll likely hurt or even kill him. it’s just what’s best in his mind. removing himself won’t stop it.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

knowing his stupid child ass yeah, probably. he was, probably not super happy about it and as a kid he was a lot more ruthless and his response was not. good

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

he’s very polite and tries to help them out in any way he can, he’s not one to be rude to people helping him.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

a little bit of both. he thinks he deserves it because of the hardships in his life, but at the same time he doesn’t? and believes everything happens for a reason and he needs to do something good to get something good.

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

...candy in a way? the two of them are parental figures to one another in the way that they take care of each other and care for each other.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

again, candy.

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

it’s...pretty difficult to say it and have him actually mean it. only two people in his life have actually gotten a sincere “i love you” from him and that’s candy and his mom. he says it without meaning it to people literally all the time as it gets him what he wants in relationships

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

he believes in both reincarnation and also the concept of heaven/hell. he would like to believe he’ll reincarnate, and if not at least get into heaven but knows deep down that he. probably will go to hell.

#ooc #HOO BOY #jam man infodump

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leftpress · 8 years ago

Text

Ur-Fascism

Umberto Eco | JUNE 22, 1995 Submitted by @sarahmascarah

In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists—that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.

I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise.

In April 1945, the partisans took over in Milan. Two days later they arrived in the small town where I was living at the time. It was a moment of joy. The main square was crowded with people singing and waving flags, calling in loud voices for Mimo, the partisan leader of that area. A former maresciallo of the Carabinieri, Mimo joined the supporters of General Badoglio, Mussolini’s successor, and lost a leg during one of the first clashes with Mussolini’s remaining forces. Mimo showed up on the balcony of the city hall, pale, leaning on his crutch, and with one hand tried to calm the crowd. I was waiting for his speech because my whole childhood had been marked by the great historic speeches of Mussolini, whose most significant passages we memorized in school. Silence. Mimo spoke in a hoarse voice, barely audible. He said: “Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices … here we are. Glory to those who have fallen for freedom.” And that was it. He went back inside. The crowd yelled, the partisans raised their guns and fired festive volleys. We kids hurried to pick up the shells, precious items, but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.

A few days later I saw the first American soldiers. They were African Americans. The first Yankee I met was a black man, Joseph, who introduced me to the marvels of Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner. His comic books were brightly colored and smelled good.

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One of the officers (Major or Captain Muddy) was a guest in the villa of a family whose two daughters were my schoolmates. I met him in their garden where some ladies, surrounding Captain Muddy, talked in tentative French. Captain Muddy knew some French, too. My first image of American liberators was thus—after so many palefaces in black shirts—that of a cultivated black man in a yellow-green uniform saying: “Oui, merci beaucoup, Madame, moi aussi j’aime le champagne…” Unfortunately there was no champagne, but Captain Muddy gave me my first piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint and I started chewing all day long. At night I put my wad in a water glass, so it would be fresh for the next day.

In May we heard that the war was over. Peace gave me a curious sensation. I had been told that permanent warfare was the normal condition for a young Italian. In the following months I discovered that the Resistance was not only a local phenomenon but a European one. I learned new, exciting words like réseau, maquis, armée secrète, Rote Kapelle, Warsaw ghetto. I saw the first photographs of the Holocaust, thus understanding the meaning before knowing the word. I realized what we were liberated from.

In my country today there are people who are wondering if the Resistance had a real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation this question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological meaning of the Resistance. For us it was a point of pride to know that we Europeans did not wait passively for liberation. And for the young Americans who were paying with their blood for our restored freedom it meant something to know that behind the firing lines there were Europeans paying their own debt in advance.

In my country today there are those who are saying that the myth of the Resistance was a Communist lie. It is true that the Communists exploited the Resistance as if it were their personal property, since they played a prime role in it; but I remember partisans with kerchiefs of different colors. Sticking close to the radio, I spent my nights—the windows closed, the blackout making the small space around the set a lone luminous halo—listening to the messages sent by the Voice of London to the partisans. They were cryptic and poetic at the same time (The sun also rises, The roses will bloom) and most of them were “messaggi per la Franchi.” Somebody whispered to me that Franchi was the leader of the most powerful clandestine network in northwestern Italy, a man of legendary courage. Franchi became my hero. Franchi (whose real name was Edgardo Sogno) was a monarchist, so strongly anti-Communist that after the war he joined very right-wing groups, and was charged with collaborating in a project for a reactionary coup d’état. Who cares? Sogno still remains the dream hero of my childhood. Liberation was a common deed for people of different colors.

In my country today there are some who say that the War of Liberation was a tragic period of division, and that all we need is national reconciliation. The memory of those terrible years should be repressed, refoulée, verdrängt. But Verdrängung causes neurosis. If reconciliation means compassion and respect for all those who fought their own war in good faith, to forgive does not mean to forget. I can even admit that Eichmann sincerely believed in his mission, but I cannot say, “OK, come back and do it again.” We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that “They” must not do it again.

But who are They?

If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.

Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?

Ionesco once said that “only words count and the rest is mere chattering.” Linguistic habits are frequently important symptoms of underlying feelings. Thus it is worth asking why not only the Resistance but the Second World War was generally defined throughout the world as a struggle against fascism. If you reread Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls you will discover that Robert Jordan identifies his enemies with Fascists, even when he thinks of the Spanish Falangists. And for FDR, “The victory of the American people and their allies will be a victory against fascism and the dead hand of despotism it represents.”

During World War II, the Americans who took part in the Spanish war were called “premature anti-fascists”—meaning that fighting against Hitler in the Forties was a moral duty for every good American, but fighting against Franco too early, in the Thirties, smelled sour because it was mainly done by Communists and other leftists. … Why was an expression like fascist pig used by American radicals thirty years later to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smoking habits? Why didn’t they say: Cagoulard pig, Falangist pig, Ustashe pig, Quisling pig, Nazi pig?

Mein Kampf is a manifesto of a complete political program. Nazism had a theory of racism and of the Aryan chosen people, a precise notion of degenerate art, entartete Kunst, a philosophy of the will to power and of the Ubermensch. Nazism was decidedly anti-Christian and neo-pagan, while Stalin’s Diamat (the official version of Soviet Marxism) was blatantly materialistic and atheistic. If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.

Italian fascism was certainly a dictatorship, but it was not totally totalitarian, not because of its mildness but rather because of the philosophical weakness of its ideology. Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy. The article on fascism signed by Mussolini in the Treccani Encyclopedia was written or basically inspired by Giovanni Gentile, but it reflected a late-Hegelian notion of the Absolute and Ethical State which was never fully realized by Mussolini. Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric. He was a militant atheist at the beginning and later signed the Convention with the Church and welcomed the bishops who blessed the Fascist pennants. In his early anticlerical years, according to a likely legend, he once asked God, in order to prove His existence, to strike him down on the spot. Later, Mussolini always cited the name of God in his speeches, and did not mind being called the Man of Providence.

Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime. Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing—far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be. It was only in the Thirties that fascist movements appeared, with Mosley, in Great Britain, and in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and even in South America. It was Italian fascism that convinced many European liberal leaders that the new regime was carrying out interesting social reform, and that it was providing a mildly revolutionary alternative to the Communist threat.

Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? The Fascist Party was born boasting that it brought a revolutionary new order; but it was financed by the most conservative among the landowners who expected from it a counter-revolution. At its beginning fascism was republican. Yet it survived for twenty years proclaiming its loyalty to the royal family, while the Duce (the unchallenged Maximal Leader) was arm-in-arm with the King, to whom he also offered the title of Emperor. But when the King fired Mussolini in 1943, the party reappeared two months later, with German support, under the standard of a “social” republic, recycling its old revolutionary script, now enriched with almost Jacobin overtones.

There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art. If the Nazi architect was Albert Speer, there was no more room for Mies van der Rohe. Similarly, under Stalin’s rule, if Lamarck was right there was no room for Darwin. In Italy there were certainly fascist architects but close to their pseudo-Coliseums were many new buildings inspired by the modern rationalism of Gropius.

There was no fascist Zhdanov setting a strictly cultural line. In Italy there were two important art awards. The Premio Cremona was controlled by a fanatical and uncultivated Fascist, Roberto Farinacci, who encouraged art as propaganda. (I can remember paintings with such titles as Listening by Radio to the Duce’s Speech or States of Mind Created by Fascism.) The Premio Bergamo was sponsored by the cultivated and reasonably tolerant Fascist Giuseppe Bottai, who protected both the concept of art for art’s sake and the many kinds of avant-garde art that had been banned as corrupt and crypto-Communist in Germany.

The national poet was D’Annunzio, a dandy who in Germany or in Russia would have been sent to the firing squad. He was appointed as the bard of the regime because of his nationalism and his cult of heroism—which were in fact abundantly mixed up with influences of French fin de siècle decadence.

Take Futurism. One might think it would have been considered an instance of entartete Kunst, along with Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. But the early Italian Futurists were nationalist; they favored Italian participation in the First World War for aesthetic reasons; they celebrated speed, violence, and risk, all of which somehow seemed to connect with the fascist cult of youth. While fascism identified itself with the Roman Empire and rediscovered rural traditions, Marinetti (who proclaimed that a car was more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, and wanted to kill even the moonlight) was nevertheless appointed as a member of the Italian Academy, which treated moonlight with great respect.

Many of the future partisans and of the future intellectuals of the Communist Party were educated by the GUF, the fascist university students’ association, which was supposed to be the cradle of the new fascist culture. These clubs became a sort of intellectual melting pot where new ideas circulated without any real ideological control. It was not that the men of the party were tolerant of radical thinking, but few of them had the intellectual equipment to control it.

During those twenty years, the poetry of Montale and other writers associated with the group called the Ermetici was a reaction to the bombastic style of the regime, and these poets were allowed to develop their literary protest from within what was seen as their ivory tower. The mood of the Ermetici poets was exactly the reverse of the fascist cult of optimism and heroism. The regime tolerated their blatant, even though socially imperceptible, dissent because the Fascists simply did not pay attention to such arcane language.

All this does not mean that Italian fascism was tolerant. Gramsci was put in prison until his death; the opposition leaders Giacomo Matteotti and the brothers Rosselli were assassinated; the free press was abolished, the labor unions were dismantled, and political dissenters were confined on remote islands. Legislative power became a mere fiction and the executive power (which controlled the judiciary as well as the mass media) directly issued new laws, among them laws calling for preservation of the race (the formal Italian gesture of support for what became the Holocaust).

The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations.

So we come to my second point. There was only one Nazism. We cannot label Franco’s hyper-Catholic Falangism as Nazism, since Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian. But the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change. The notion of fascism is not unlike Wittgenstein’s notion of a game. A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein put it. Consider the following sequence:

1 2 3 4abc bcd cde def

Suppose there is a series of political groups in which group one is characterized by the features abc, group two by the features bcd, and so on. Group two is similar to group one since they have two features in common; for the same reasons three is similar to two and four is similar to three. Notice that three is also similar to one (they have in common the feature c). The most curious case is presented by four, obviously similar to three and two, but with no feature in common with one. However, owing to the uninterrupted series of decreasing similarities between one and four, there remains, by a sort of illusory transitivity, a family resemblance between four and one.

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.

But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them indulgently accepted by the Roman Pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the US, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. One of the first sentences uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was “I could have transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples”—“maniples” being a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties—among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.

Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.

The message on the front celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,”—I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words.

We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

Let me finish with a poem by Franco Fortini:

Sulla spalletta del ponte Le teste degli impiccati Nell’acqua della fonte La bava degli impiccati.

Sul lastrico del mercato Le unghie dei fucilati Sull’erba secca del prato I denti dei fucilati.

Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi La nostra carne non è più d’uomini Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi Il nostro cuore non è più d’uomini.

Ma noi s’è letto negli occhi dei morti E sulla terra faremo libertà Ma l’hanno stretta i pugni dei morti La giustizia che si farà.

On the cobbles in the market- places The fingernails of those lined up and shot On the dry grass in the open spaces The broken teeth of those lined up and shot.

Biting the air, biting the stones Our flesh is no longer human Biting the air, biting the stones Our hearts are no longer human.

But we have read into the eyes of the dead And shall bring freedom on the earth But clenched tight in the fists of the dead Lies the justice to be served.) —poem translated by Stephen Sartarelli